One year since Martha Williams passed away

Projecting the spirit and personality of Martha H.Williams

Mom is at the table at right at First Lutheran Church in Morris. It's the kitchen of the fellowship hall. First Lutheran was a special place for her.

A young Martha Williams at right, posing with her mother Hilda Ohlson and nephews Allan and Norman, identical twin sons of Edwin and Doris Ohlson.

Sibling shares a hug: Edwin Ohlson, Mom's brother, is at right.

Martha and younger sister Mildred pose with parents Andrew and Hilda Ohlson in Brainerd. Andrew started this family when he was up in years. Only recently did your blog host discover that he had a previous wife, Johanek, who died in 1920 at age 46. I don't yet know if that marriage produced children. Information is very scant about Johanek.

Mom with the childhood dog of the Ohlson children of Brainerd MN. The dog's name was "Teddy." Mom always said it was really brother Edwin's dog. She said the dog became disconsolate when Edwin left home for the service for WWII. The childhood home was basic with amenities. But it was full of love.

We never forget the times when our parents passed into the next life. Today, Wednesday, April 24, marks one year since my mother passed on. It was in the very early morning hours when two representatives of the funeral home came to our residence. One was Steve Hokanson. He shared a hug and condolences. An angel had its eye on Steve. He would be called to heaven sooner than any of us would have expected.
Our family had long been close to the Hokansons. Steve's wife Randee ran the Historical Society. That organization put up a display about my late father once. Most of us still remember Walt Hokanson who lived such a long and rich life. Walt bequeathed a lot of money to his church which happens to be my family's church too. That was generous, although I have seen much too scant evidence of how the money has helped our church of First Lutheran. Frankly I have seen no evidence. That's a little discouraging. The ELCA in our neck of the woods had a problem with employee theft a while back. Some dude who lived in Wolverton. I plan on bequeathing no money to the church.
Anyway, Steve Hokanson seemed in the prime of his life when he came to our residence last April. I was keeping my composure just fine. That's probably because Mom's death came as part of the natural order of things. I guess "her time had come" is a cliche. Mom dealt with a succession of health issues over her last few years. She had good fortune at some of those junctures. She was age 93 at the time of her passing. Her 94th birthday would have been in June.
There was a time when I felt strongly that her obituary would read "age 91." So we were blessed, in the case of both Dad and Mom, that their lives extended so far. But God does in fact create us so that life ends. He also created us so that our mortal bodies can fail us in many ways toward the end. Why? Why did God develop this kind of road map? Maybe my parents now know the answer to that in heaven.
This past Sunday was Easter. I'm not overjoyed at this holiday as I'm discomforted at hearing about the suffering of Jesus Christ at the end. I don't recall such graphic visuals, when I was a kid. Maybe we have the Mel Gibson movie to attribute for the new way. I could live without it. I find Christmas to be a 100 percent more joyous holiday, ironic since we don't even know the real date of Christ's birth.
I mark Easter by calling up the concluding scene of Monty Python's "Life of Brian" on YouTube. "Look on the bright side of life." A chocolate bunny is a nice way to mark the holiday too.
 
Steve Hokanson RIP
This Easter Sunday, we at First Lutheran were informed of the death of Steve Hokanson. What a reminder of the frailty of our human existence. I had heard about his sudden health issues. I wondered right away if these issues might be connected to his well-known service in Vietnam.
I had a first cousin, Norman Ohlson, who was a Vietnam veteran and died before his time. Norman was highly decorated. I don't even want to know what he had to do to win that. So many of those veterans were hardly aware that the travail of their service was not over when they came home. The war dominated the media when I was a kid. I was a voracious consumer of media.
The troubling stuff of the 1960s, all the tumult, instilled in me a cynicism that I have carried through life, sometimes to my severe detriment. Kids are raised to be so idealistic today.
Death has recently taken some other close acquaintances of mine, such as Sherman Waage, Bill Rickmeyer and Mike Miller. There is always a changing of the guard in the community's fabric. I ceased being a public person in this community in 2006. The new leadership network is increasingly composed of people I don't even know. In many cases I know their parents.
I am thankful that my family's affairs were not complicated at the time both my parents passed. It helped that they had only one child. We hear horror stories about estate situations when certain older people die. What a relief there is no such mess for the Williams family.
 
How much to know?
I have wondered: now that both of my parents are in heaven, would it be good or bad for them to learn about the problems I had growing up? I'd say bad. They needn't be confronted with that. They should just feel pride in their own lives. No doubt I was an impediment for them. But I was just a kid and probably needed special attention. Maybe like Ritalin. Perhaps I should have been a poster boy for Ritalin.
School was OK for me up through the sixth grade. After that it rapidly became nothing but miserable. I began defining my self image only in connection to how I was doing in school classes. It was all I lived for, it was the only area in life where I got any feedback at all. I equated failure in school with a spiritual, maybe literal, death. And how foolish, because the vast majority of what I was forced to "study" after the sixth grade was pointless. It was just an exercise in being dragged through stuff. I think this reflected our culture of the industrial age, a time when most jobs had little enjoyment. So, school was designed to reflect that.
I think school has been forced to adjust because of the sea change of digital life. The digital world is set up to make all tasks easier - it's the whole point. Not that life's challenges are wiped away, because all those efficiencies have wiped away jobs, like "middlemen," which even though marked by routineness, were after all jobs. Watch the movie "Tommy Boy" (Chris Farley).
I was greatly handicapped by my physical appearance when young. It brought vicious teasing. So bad, I could hardly circulate at all. I developed social anxiety disorder which made it hard for me to shop, to buy proper clothes etc. I was teased for having an effeminate facial appearance. That has never jumped out at me from a mirror, but I guess it's true, even today. What would all my critics and detractors like me to do about this?
I'd go play "scatterball" over lunch hour at the old elementary gym, when I was in junior high, and have other boys scream at me incessantly about my apparently unacceptable appearance. "Girl face!" they'd scream, over and over. Certainly some teachers had to be aware of this. Why couldn't they arrange for me just to go home? Just get me the hell out of there.
Would I want my parents in heaven to know this background of my experience? It's relevant to understand my orientation toward life, but I'd say "no." In heaven we are not encumbered by such mortal life misery. Sometimes I'd like to give God the finger.
 
Thanks to Del Sarlette for scanning the photos that appear with this post.
 
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com