COLUMN: Tales from the Gravel Ridge – Finding strength and beauty in community

Global Dignity Day has been observed in many parts of the world since 2008.

The focus of that day is to reflect on what the word “dignity” means to us as individuals. It provides us with an opportunity to focus on learning to be compassionate. If we pause for a moment to consider how that might be reflected in our own lives, I have no doubt that we will soon realize that opportunities to show compassion or kindness occur daily in various ways. Most of such involvement would in all likelihood not be newsworthy, but the effect on one person or another, could nevertheless be immeasurable.

A personal experience my mother shared with us many years ago, continues to resonate with me. My brother Erich, not yet 14 months of age, having developed an incurable liver condition, died in Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg on May 23, 1946. My parents, Katarina and Cornelius Falk surely must have asked, how could this happen to such a sturdy young child?

My mother, was also in Concordia Hospital on that day, having just given birth to a robust baby boy, whom my parents named Edward. Dr. Henry Oelkers, our family’s kind and caring doctor, came to my mother’s bedside, and advised her that Edward, her newborn baby was healthy, but that he would require major surgery before being discharged from hospital. Dr. Oelkers anticipated it would require approximately three months before the newborn member of our family would join us in our Rosengard home.

To this day I have a vivid memory of our father’s arrival at our home, holding his young son Erich’s lifeless body, wrapped in a simple blanket, in his arms. Our very good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Johan Wiebe, provided transportation from Winnipeg to our home, on that day. My sister Katie, working in Winnipeg, was also travelling home with them. Katie told me, many decades after that occasion, that Mrs. Wiebe suggested to her to sit in the front seat of the vehicle with the driver, Mr. Wiebe. This act speaks of an immense degree of compassion on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Wiebe. To my mind having a caring, mature friend, in the person of Mrs. Wiebe as a fellow passenger, instead of a grieving daughter, for that long drive home, must have provided a measure of comfort for my father. For Katie too, the seating arrangement gave her an opportunity to process the events of the day in her own private front seat location.

My mother, in the meantime, remained in hospital, as was customary in those days, following the birth of a child. She shared with us that her fellow hospital roommate had a gentle and compassionate way about her. Our mother, who was a reserved, private person would sometimes face the wall in order to have a measure of privacy in grieving Erich’s death, as well as coping with the anxiety related to the surgery her newborn baby would have to undergo before joining us in our Rosengard home. It was her roommate, who gently drew our mother out of her enormous mental and emotional burden.

Sometimes seemingly small gestures can have an effect that reaches far beyond the moment. No one had to instruct Mr. and Mrs. Wiebe, or our friends and neighbours to treat our family with dignity. They stood by our parents, and all of us in ways that helped to ease the pain and anxiety that challenged us at that difficult time.

The funeral for Erich, attended by numerous friends and neighbours, in addition to relatives, was conducted at the Rosengard School. The large number of people present that day, as evidenced by the photographs in our family collection, is a powerful reminder of the strength of friendship and of community. The grief etched on the faces of those individuals, reflects the fact that though they hardly knew this young child, they were with us in person, and also in spirit. In the depth of their being these individuals knew, as the poet John Donne so powerfully reminds us, that the bell tolls for all of us.

By their presence these individuals were treating this young child’s life with dignity. Though only for a short period in time, Erich had had a place within our family, and by extension, in the greater community, and in the world. By so doing, they blessed our family as we mourned Erich’s death.