Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Hurting hearts in need of prayer September 21, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:30 AM
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WHAT DO YOU SAY? What do you say? What do you say to your sister-in-law who has just learned that her father has died in a single-vehicle accident in southwestern Minnesota?

What do you say when your heart hurts, when all you can do is cry and you need to console someone who is hurting more than you?

What do you say?

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… I love you.”

As your voice breaks and the tears fall and there is silence on the other end of the phone line, you pull yourself together. Not because you can, but because you must. You want your sister-in-law to hear you speak, to feel your love embracing her, in your words, on the worst day of her life.

This was my Tuesday.

First came the phone call early Tuesday morning from my other sister-in-law with the news which sent me reeling, my heart racing, the tears flowing in a river of grief.

“… dad was killed in a car accident last night…”

Sketchy details that don’t matter because they won’t bring him back—the husband, the father, the grandfather, the brother, the uncle, the man loved by so many.

It is my duty to inform three of my younger siblings, my mom… What do I say? How can I tell them?

So I phone my husband first, barely able to still my trembling fingers to punch the numbers into my cell phone. I can hardly get the words out, to tell him the awful, awful news. He offers to call my family. But I tell him, “No, I can do this.”

And I do. First my brother, who is on vacation and whom I am unable to reach. In my voice message I instruct him to call me, that it is important.

Then I speak to my sister, who will contact my other sister.

I call my eldest daughter, leave a message with the other daughter. My son will get the news when he arrives home from school.

And then I must tell my mom. But I don’t want her to be alone, so I call my aunt—her neighbor—to deliver the news in person. I phone my mom 10 minutes later, after my aunt has arrived, and my grief breaks through again in words overwhelmed with emotion.

Later my aunt phones to tell me we reached my mom just in time, before a friend called with the news of Steve’s death. In a small town, word travels quickly.

And so my Tuesday ebbed and flowed with grief in more than a dozen phone calls made and fielded. The message left with my youngest brother, mourning the tragic death of his father-in-law. The husband and father trying to be strong for his wife and their children.

I cry for my young nephew and my teenage niece and their mom and her mom and my youngest brother. All of them. A family hurting.

And then when I can calm myself, if but for a moment, I bow my head in prayer, asking for God’s comfort and peace to bless this grieving family.

It is all my sister-in-law has asked of me—to pray.

And now I am asking you. Please pray.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Honoring the memory of my dad April 4, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 11:19 AM
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Elvern Kletscher's 1950s military photo

HIS OBITUARY READS IN PART: From 1952-1953, he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict. He served on the front lines, receiving the Purple Heart after being wounded…He enjoyed his weekly visits with his veterans support group. He enjoyed bird watching, making horseradish and tomato juice with his family.

Elvern Kletscher passed away Thursday, April 3, 2003, at the Sunwood Good Samaritan Center in Redwood Falls, Minnesota at the age of 72 years and 29 days.

Yesterday, on the eight-year anniversary of my father’s death, I failed to remember. How could I? How could I forget the day he died, the day I lost my dad? How could I?

It breaks my heart that I would forget. This failure to remember the date of his death seems like a dishonor to the father I loved. He was a man who worked hard tending the earth, who loved his family and God. He was a soldier who served his country and, because of his time on the killing fields of Korea, suffered from a lifetime of demons that at times robbed me of my father.

But in the end, in his last days, I came to terms with the issues that sometimes made life with him difficult and challenging. I saw only the goodness as I stood at his bedside in the Veterans Administration Hospital where he lay dying of cancer and congestive heart failure.

As I held his hand, stroked his thick white hair, held a straw to his lips, I tried to be brave, to cheer him, to comfort him.

But when I couldn’t keep my emotions in check any more, I fled his room, stood outside his hospital room and wept.

Once I pulled myself back together, I returned to his bedside, listened to him tell me he was going to a better place, that he wanted all of us to take care of Mom. And then I cried, right there, holding nothing back because I couldn’t no matter how hard I tried.

Two days later, after being transported back to his home county, into a nursing home, my dad died.

And on April 7 we buried him, deep in the soil, in the hillside cemetery that overlooks his beloved prairie, the place where, except for his time in the military, he lived his entire life.

On that gloomy April day of biting cold wind, I held my mom close, my arm wrapped around her shoulders as she shivered uncontrollably. Together with my siblings we huddled inside a tent, next to the coffin.

As the guns fired in a military salute, as taps sounded their mournful wail, as my mom accepted a carefully folded American flag, I wept.

Today I weep, too, as I remember the father I loved.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

PS to my whooping cough post November 7, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:34 PM
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DELORIS EDNA EMILIE BODE died on May 10, 1935, from pertussis (whooping cough), pneumonia and a gangrene-type infection of the mouth.

The second-born daughter of Lawrence and Josephine Bode, she was only nine months and nine days old.

She was my aunt.

The gravestone of Deloris Edna Emilie Bode in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery, rural Courtland.

Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

 

 

Remembering my dad April 3, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:40 AM
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Elvern Kletscher, right, and a fellow solider in Korea.

I PULL OPEN the bottom file drawer and reach inside, rifling through the folders until I find it: “Elvern K. (Obits, death certif.)”

Today marks seven years since my dad, Elvern Kletscher, died at age 72 of esophageal cancer.

Every April 3, I reread my father’s obituary. I remember the man who enjoyed making tomato juice and horseradish. I remember the farmer who milked cows and worked the land. I remember my soldier-dad who struggled with the demons of war. I remember the father who loved his family and his Lord and left his children and grandchildren with a legacy of faith.

So it is while attending Good Friday services at my church that I think of my dad and his death.

I blame the pastor.

He begins his sermon by painting a picture of a loved one upon his/her death bed surrounded by family.

I am here, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis on a Tuesday evening with my husband and son. We are at my dad’s bedside, two days before his death, although we do not know then that he will live only two more days.

The focus, says the pastor, is on making the patient comfortable.

I seek out a nurse for a glass of ice water to quench the thirst of my dying father. I lean in close, place a straw between his parched lips, so he can drink.

The family is gathered there, continues the preacher, to hear the dying wishes of the loved one.

“Take care of Mom,” he says. I listen to my father’s wishes as tears stream down my face. I can barely endure the grief. Although I am well aware that my dad will soon be gone, “soon” has always been an undefined time that I cannot comprehend.

It is then that the pastor’s message fully makes the impact he desired. I sense the grief the disciples felt in realizing their Lord would die. Tears seep into the corners of my eyes and I wonder if I will break down and flee from the sanctuary for the pain of this moment.

I am crying now, weeping, as my dad comforts me. He tells me not to cry, that he is going to a better place. I know that he speaks the truth. Yet I cannot endure the words. So I leave his side, but for a brief time, to stand outside his hospital room, to cry my tears of sorrow.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling