Yesterday was the day of my great-aunt’s funeral. My great-aunt Laura died unexpectedly on Monday, and the funeral marked a sad day as we mourned the loss of a family matriarch.
Laura was the oldest sister of my grandmother, who had six sisters and two brothers. Her parents, Lars and Martha, sailed to America from Norway and settled in Tagus, North Dakota of all places. Tagus, once a booming railroad town with an ice cream shop, a school, a church, a post office and maybe even a grocery store (I'd have to double check that with my grandmother - my official Tagus historian), is now home to some run down old buildings, a few human inhabitants and some horses.
Of Lars and Martha's children, only four remain - my grandmother and her three sisters. One of the middle sisters, Marget, who married my grandfather's brother(which is how I ended up with double cousins), died some years ago, and the boys, Berent and Louie, died before I was born.
The little town of Tagus has been a part of my family’s history for so many reasons, one of which being its old country church, where my family attended church all throughout my childhood. Before it burned to the ground, much of the church’s congregation consisted of people of some relation to me. And that is how I ultimately came to see Laura every week of my life until about junior high. Laura and her husband, Gladwin, were also regular attendees of my sister and I's birthday parties and major life events. As is typical of all of my Norwegian family members, whenever we visited their farm just outside of Tagus, we were always welcomed with cookies. And we never left without some Tang to go with our cookies. I remember playing in the yard of that old farmstead down in the valley, beside the lake, while my mother and Laura and Gladwin discussed faming, ranching and the weather.
Laura ended up leaving the farm and moving into town, and after Gladwin died in 2003, I found out just how truly quiet Laura was at the core of her soul. Gladwin, who could start a conversation with a field rock, always entertained us with his musings, but Laura, well she was content just to listen to everyone else’s musings.
And my grandmother, while her heart is bigger than America, is the most stoic of people. Yesterday I watched her mourn the loss of her sister, the sister she spent much of her life alongside, without a whole lot of tears, emotion or words. And while my generation will never know the thousand upon thousands of hours the two families spent on the prairie surrounding the little town of Tagus, seeding and harvesting the land, their legacy will be that of the pioneer, and my grandmother and Laura, that of the pioneering, farmer’s wife.
1 Reactions:
Nice Story. Those pioneers were amazing. I found this because of the mention of Tagus which is where my Norwegian ancestors settled in the early 20th century.
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