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This is my beautiful Grandma. Oh how I did love to go and visit her when I was a child. She lived in Bismarck, North Dakota and we lived in California. We saw each other about every 2 years. That was not nearly enough.
My biological grandfather, Philip Albert Colberg, died in his early 40's of a lung complication. There was not a clear diagnosis but my grandmother said she thought it was lung cancer. 10 days after his death his mother died. They shared a farm with my Dad's grandparents. They each had their own home on the property. Grandpa Colberg had died previously but his wife stayed in their home on the darm. My grandfather supported his own little family and his mother. When he died followed just a few days later by his mother, it put my grandmother in a position of having to sell the property and all of the farm equipment for a song. With that money she had to find a new way to support herself and two young children. My dad was 11 and his sister Grace only 6.
To do this she had to leave my Dad with their good friends, the Vanorneys, whose son was Dad's best buddy. She then took Gracie and went to Bismarck over 100 miles from her 11 years old son. There her sister could tend to Grace while my grandmother went to court reporting school for nearly two years. She sacrificed everything for her two children. She made sure they had what they needed to succeed in life. They adored her.
She was a widow for many year but then married my Grandpa Jake after my own parents were married. They had a great house in Bismarck with a screened in front porch. The houses on their street were so pretty and well kept and all of the houses were white. It was a beautiful array of white and green with the well-manicured lawns and trees. I liked that it was an established older neighborhood. It had a very welcoming feeling.
Grandpa and grandma's house was so different than our relatively new California rambler. It had a wooden screen door that slammed shut like only a wooden one can, and they had a claw foot bathtub, the first I'd ever seen. They had a basement and in it was an old wringer washer. They had another treasure too a Singer treadle sewing machine. They were both used regularly by my grandma. We kids loved that basement. It was like having a second house underground. That intrigued us as born and bred Californians.
My Grandma was so loving. She was sentimental and she was a smart as a whip. She was a school teacher, a court reporter and worked in the Fish and Game Department in the State Capitol there in North Dakota in her day.
I loved hugging her. She was round and soft and warm and I loved her. She taught me how to put beautiful swirls on the frosting of a layered cake with my fingertip and a bowl of warm water. I don't bake cakes too often but when I do it always has a swirled frosting on top.
My Grandma showed me how she made dill pickles and put up other things from their garden. She would send us all one dollar for our birthdays with a special note. She loved poems and reading and she was a fabulous writer. She wrote the descriptive newspaper article about our wedding and it sounded so professional.
After my Grandpa Jake died she would visit us sometimes and she would sleep in my double bed with me. I loved that because we would talk and giggle a lot and she would tell me funny stories about my dad when he was a boy. That one on one time was so important to me.
She stayed with me the night before we got married. That was a special night for me. She shared her sage wisdom with a lot. Oddly she also spent the night with my Mom before she and my Dad were married! I wish she had been alive to do the same for our daughters.
Grandma and I were great friends and we wrote a lot of letters back and forth. I still have many of the letters today.
She was a Christian woman, loved her family and had an interest in genealogy. I wish I could talk to her today. She had a firm foundation in good principles and was a wonderful example to me. She was such a refined lady and powerfully strong too.
I see now she had a great influence on me and the way I live my life. We liked so many of the same things. I realize now that I am a grandma myself, that her life was far more difficult than I had imagined as a child.
Grandma told me this one day when I was feeling sad. "Darling, all sunshine produces only a desert." I've never forgotten that.
I'll never forget her either. She was the only grandparent I ever knew. Except for my Grandpa Jake. He was not my biological grandfather but he was my grandpa in every other way.
Bonnie J Mattson
19 September 2014