τοτε 'ηψατο των
οψθαλμων
αυτων λεγων
κατα την πιστιν
'υμων
γενηθητς 'υμιν
according to your faith
let it be done to you
Celebrating Grandma (Helen) Enns
May 26, 1914-December 20, 2007
I've been wanting to put together something here to honour Grandma Enns. She certainly was
quite a lady! Since I've had the great honour and priviledge of writing the eulogy for the memorial service, I've gotten to know
her a lot more over the past week from talking to people about her life and from reading things that she wrote. It's obvious
that she touched people of all ages. So what I'm going to do here is post the eulogy, any tributes that people have sent in, and
interesting photos (which won't be in any particular order).
If you have anything to contribute (written memories or photos), just email it to me and I'll post it here!
The more there is, the better, so don't be shy!
Downloads
- Eulogy online with photos
- Eulogy and Tributes together for downloading or printing.
- Photos in a zip file for downloading
Tributes
Aunt Trudy, Helen's youngest sister
Monday 24 December 2007
Good Evening; Just got home from the S.S. program in church and a tour around the town to look at lights; now it's time to get something on paper. I had a happy carefree childhood, but have a very poor memory.
I was three days short of 11 month old when your parents got married, then when I was 5, going on 6 we moved to Petaigan. the visits back and forth were very few and far between.
I always felt secure in the love of my brothers and sisters.
When Grandmother gave birth to me there was no time for a hospital or mid-wife. The older sibblings had to go to the church across the road and your mother stayed to assist Grandpa with the delivery. I recall her saying many times what a thrill that had been. When the mid-wife arrived she proceeded to give me a bath and dress me. As soon as she was gone, your mother got fresh water and gave me another bath. She didn't think I was clean enough. Before we moved to Petaigan there was an " Eaton's Beauty" doll in the catologue. Naturally there was no money for such a doll.... I believe she was instrumental in the making of the first "Army & Navy" Beauty, which I received that Christmas. Over the years Evelyn liked playing with it. On one trip she asked if she could take it along for a short while. Your mother didn't want her to take the tattered doll along but I believe Aunt Sara said she could. The doll went to Lost River and eventually went missing. Many years later, when they were up for a visit, I asked her about the doll. Apparently she sent one of you guys up into the attic of the old house to retrieve it, only to find that the mice had practically destroyed it. Some time later I received a new "Army and Navy" doll complete with brown yarn braids, a white blouse and pink gingham pinafore. This doll is safely tucked away and greatly tresured.
I always marvelled at her a ability to sew. No matter how I tried it always took me longer to finish a garment. I asked uncle Henry if he recall anything that he wanted to share , he said he couldn't remember anything.
Aunt Sara said she had many good memories but couldn't put them into words. She was thrilled to have been the flower girl at their wedding and recalled an incident that still makes her laugh, perhaps not something you would want the general public to know, anyway. Aunt Sara was about 8 or 9. Your mother was scrubbing floors, which at that time was no small chore. Sara was doing something and she needed to get to her drawer to retrieve something. In oder to get there she had to crawl over the bed.(Walking on the wet floor was not allowed.) When she got to the other side of the bed, lo and below, there was your mother looking up at her and screaming for her to stay back, Aunt Sara said the look on her face had been so funny that she burst out laughing and couldn't stop to the annoyance of her sister.
The other day when she talked about it she was still laughing.
I recall being in Nipawin at your place when Wilfeed and Mary Ens were married in your home. I did not have suitable clothes for a wedding so she took a pink blouse and a skirt of hers and successfully dressed me for the wedding.
We will always remember this dear sister who showed us in many ways how much she loved us. (Even though we younger ones often were brats.)
Trudy
Aunt Mary, Grandma's sister-in-law, bridesmaid, and friend
My earliest recollections of Helen are of her family's arrival in the Teddington Saskatchewan District on a hayrack powered by 2 horses. They had left the drought-stricken area of Hanley, south of Saskatoon to find a place that could sustain them through the "dirty thirties". There were the parents and a good size family to sustain.
They had asked dad Enns' permission to move into my grandfathers Enns' vacated two-room log home on the south side of our cow pasture. No sooner said than done!
Off the hayrack scrambled mom, dad and the children—all nine of them. I was the only girl in the Jacob Enns family, so adding three boys and six girls was like a gift from heaven to our neighbourhood. Their immediate intention was to find work. The boys helped Uncle John J Neufeld with trucking jobs. The oldest girl, Helen, was hired by my parents to help mother with housework and gardening. Not only could Helen do laundry and ironing, she also had a good way with scissors needle and thread. She soon became adept at the treadle sewing machine and she continued to create garments for her family and neighbours up until a few years ago.
Best of all, she became sister to me though she was seven years ahead of my age, it didn't matter to her. She married my brother Jake and that further consolidated what became a lifetime friendship between us.
I always admired her for her interest in people: her flexibility, her creativity, her ingenuity and motivational skills. People? She loved them!
She was totally committed to Jake and always supportive and loyal to him and their church ministry. To her gifted family she was a motivator, a wise counsellor, a proud mother, grandma and great grandma - and sometimes, disciplinarian!
These accomplishments, she would say came as a result of her faith in the Lord and an undying commitment to the One she believed in.
She has taught me much about life and how to live it. Whenever we had to part and be away from each other, we decided not to say "good-bye;" but simply, "so long!"
So, until we meet again, Helen, "so long!"
Jeanette, Granddaughter (daughter of Carl)
Thinking back upon Grandma Enns' life, I'm glad I had the special opportunity to watch her "grow up" for about 18 years on our yard! A short walk across the driveway would always reveal something interesting, creative, often messy, but never predictable, going on next door. The smells of shoe dye or a sinkful of bleach would waft out from under the door, and we would often be greeted by Grandma excitedly exclaiming over a "big brainwave" she had just had in regards to the present project she was working on. Grandma's creativity and sense of humour were a special part of her that Derek and I loved to join in. I remember always smiling when I got back home to find myself covered in threads! An ongoing witness to Grandma's amazing talent with her sewing machine... wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, slipcovers, remodelling any "store bought" dress, firmly stuffed animals with gluey glass eyeballs, 12 aprons for Christmas Day at age 89, any manner of curtain, and even a big sawdust-filled "man-doll" for Derek one year. If we ever needed any creative inspiration for a school project, or a costume, or a cloth cover box of any size, or a button, Grandma was always there. It seemed to me that there was nothing that a sewing machine, a glue gun, and Grandma, couldn't create!
Grandma's feisty personality, combined with her sense of humour, ensured that life was never dull around our yard. When she accidentally melted some plastic dolls heads in the microwave until they resembled charcoal, she simply put them in an urn-like container and placed them on her windowsill. I'm still not sure whose ashes they were supposed to be. When she thought the flowerbeds around her house needed some color, out came the plastic and silk flowers. They actually looked pretty good from the road! When Derek got the new "Duck Hunt" Nintendo game, she was one of the first to try it. I'll never forget how she held that plastic gun up to her eye and expertly shot all the birds and even the retriever dog when it laughed at her! Yes, she taught me how to bake Christmas "icicles," but she also helped me out one day with the euthanasia of some cats! Never predictable!
Grandma loved change. It was always interesting to see what the weekly arrangement of furniture was going to be, or which slipcovers were on, or which angle the wheeled kitchen counter was at. The most dramatic changes were seen whenever we would return home from some family vacation. One year she built herself new back door steps from wood scraps she had scrounged from the shop. Sometimes all the raspberries and shrubs were "pruned" to the ground. It was not uncommon for Grandma to not hear us coming into her house, and we often came upon her teetering from a very precarious ladder or stool, fixing or sawing or hammering. We all know Grandma also loved speed. This was no better seen than by the spray of rocks and the ruts left in the gravel of our driveway as she sped away! I think Grandma said it best herself in this statement she wrote, "My most comforting item was a car for twenty years!" She would often exclaim in a typically feisty fashion, "No one is ever going to call me an old-lady driver!" And no one ever did. Even in the last few years when her beloved car was replaced by a walker, she still "drove" all the quicker when she thought someone was cutting her off or getting ahead of her on the run to the elevator.
Grandma taught me many things. I always marvelled at, even with only a grade two education, she would painstakingly write out all her prayers or pore over the latest Dobson article... an amazing testimony to her lifelong faith. The four to five page letters she would write to me while I was away at school brought smiles to the entire dorm, but always concluded with me knowing that back home Grandma was praying and thinking of me. As I moved to the prairies, it was comforting to have Grandma come share this new adventure with me for a few years. I never tired of watching her delight over the clouds and the weather patterns, or looking at Christmas lights. At age 88 I watched her strut down the runway as she participated in a four generation fashion show at a local mall (of course NOT wearing "man-pants").
And now, as the pending arrival of her 15th great—grandchild prevents me from joining her official farewell, I am comforted by the lifetime of memories we have shared together and the fact that she is now finally at home with Grandpa.