Anna Bernice Rosenkoetter

Sometime late Sunday evening or early Monday morning, my grandmother died.

Grandma Adcox was 89, my mom's mother. Grandma Payne died in 2004 (at the age of 95).

I saw Grandma Anna most days because she lived in the Lincoln Douglas Apartments, and the STARadio studios are on the ground floor of the building. I'd seen her just the week before during her more or less daily walk, and kissed her and talked with her for a while before getting back to work.

It's been a tough week. While Mom and my Aunt Betty have been handling the various things that need to be done, I've been continuing to slog away at work until the visitation (tonight) and the funeral (tomorrow--Thursday). Sometimes I just have to stop and put my head down.

Last night I went over to Mom and Dad's and spent some time, just to be with the family for a while.

Mom shared the following with me, from her Aunt Margaret (the wife of Grandma Adcox's brother, Richard, who died earlier this year).

It is a fitting tribute to a woman whom, for the first time, I am seeing was very much what I imagine a saint must be like.

Thank you for these wonderful words, Aunt Margaret. They sum up Grandma Adcox in worthy fashion.

ANNA BERNICE ROSENKOETTER
Today Anna left the cares - and joys - of this world.

Maggie, her eldest daughter called and said that she passed on while at home, in her
apartment. Instead of putting her in a nursing home they followed her wishes and agreed to let her stay in the apartment that has been her home for a number of years now. Margaret Ann (Maggie), her husband Fr. Payne, and younger daughter, Betty Jean have looked out for Anna and cared for her, doing all the necessary things to make her later years as comfortable and safe as possible for her.

Anna was - is - a Legend in her family. She was wild, wonderful and willful. Now, you might say, SHE DID IT HER WAY. But NO! Anna had a lasso around her. And she was corralled by - what?

Look and see.

She had a heart of pure gold. Anna would have - and did - given you the shirt off her back if she thought you needed it - and would have even gone so far, with a pure heart, as to give you her underwear too if she thought you needed it. She lived, to do good unto others - and it was her pure unadulterated JOY to give to you, what she had to give.

Anna had a gift of love. She was in love with life - with the days - with the very moment existing in her day. She loved her family - though sometimes we all misinterpreted that love. She, at times, expressed that love in ways that we did not see clearly as love. She sometimes chose as friends, husbands, comrades, people that seemed to us to be not worthy of her trust and love. And people often took unfair - or evil - advantage of her Christ loving nature.

Anna was in love with the Lord. Her prayers to the Holy Spirit were mainly, “Thy will be done; forgive us our trespasses as we willingly forgive.” She once expressed to me that she had a - I will call it - revelation from her Lord. One day she had an understanding that, to be forgiven, she had to forgive, without reservation. This seemed to be so freeing to her.

She said that, simply put to me that, she could not hold anything against ANYONE but HAD to (with the trust that she had in God’s word), forgive everything and everyone that came against her. She felt the heavy burden of the trials of this world that came against her many times but THE WORD of God stuck and she had to release it because she knew she had many things that she had to be forgiven of, by others.

This tremendous love that was gifted to Anna was expressed in her giving. She had a talent - gift - for making lovely things with her hands. Many were blessed with these pretty and useful things she made and sacrificially, gave. Her art form, I will call it, is in several different places throughout the world for she gave things to some whose travels took them outside of the U.S.

She had another gift. She could roll off the birthdays of her family and acquaintances that absolutely blew my mind. How could she remember all of these dates. And her family members were, as well as her acquaintances, truly numerous. She made sure that she had birthday AND Christmas gifts for everyone. How she could stretch her meager income so far (even if she might have had some help from others – don’t know if that happened) had to in be the grace of God.

Anna was a champion to her grandchildren. My, how proud of them she was. She loved to tell me of their accomplishments, aspirations and dreams. She always had on hand, pictures that she loved to show with parental pride. She had so much joy in the accomplishments and joys of her children and grandchildren, and THEIR children and THEIR children and so on - and on. Her love for them was a river unending.

Anna’s going on with the Lord, leaves a giant hole in many lives. Her love expressed, her deep caring for her loved ones, will be missed at surprising times and ways, as the days march on, for the rest of us left behind.

We will see her again in the glory that the Lord has in store for her. I can see her with her brother, my husband. What a fellowship they must be having. And with other loved ones that went before her - what a Holy family gathering must be taking place, for we are all CHILDREN OF THE MOST HIGH GOD - PRAISE HIS MOST HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS NAME. AMEN !

I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO MY TURN, COMING TOO, TO GO THROUGH THAT DOOR TO JOIN THEM - TO KNEEL BEFORE THE BLESSED ONE THAT CAME AND GAVE HIS EVERYTHING FOR ME SO THAT I CAN JOIN THEM AND BE A PART OF HIS HEAVENLY FAMILY.
--Margaret Rosenkoetter

Nose to the grindstone...

Greetings all!

Sorry for being away fron the blog for a rather lengthy period. Between work, church, and other obligations, it was the usual problem of 25 hours of stuff to do but only 24 hours in the day.

It's interesting in my work getting to have some lengthy conversations with people running for office. In the last week I had two such and came away fairly impressed with both candidates. They were pretty forthright and I found that even though one is of a somewhat different political persuasion than myself, his views and beliefs appear well-thought out and not just "grafted on" by his association with a politcal party. The other candidate is nearer my own positions, but that person too made a strong impression.

I am grateful for the chance I had to chat with them both, and I hope it helps me to write more helpful stories about them as we get closer to election day--so that you can have a healthy helping of information on which to base your own voting decisions.

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I spent about 10 hours this weekend with a friend working our way through a simulation (aka wargame aka boardgame) of World War One titled DEATH IN THE TRENCHES. It was educational to say the least.

In addition to throwing in various historical events and having them affect what the two sides could accomplish in any given turn (which were considered to be one quarter of a year), the very mechanics that governed fighting and movement really heightened the "stalemate" sensation that the Great War was noted for (at least on the Western Front).

Basically you knew the standard strength of a division, and you assigned up to 20 divisions to an army. When you tried to take a bit of land you totaled up all the divisions attacking and multiplied by the basic strength. Then you subtracted a percentage for the terrain or for your enemy being in a fortress zone. Finally you looked at your total strength and decided how many dice to roll--you could literally roll as many as you pleased BUT if you rolled a number HIGHER than your strength for that fight you accomplished nothing! I won't say how many times I "threw caution to the wind" in the first couple of turns and ended up getting nowhere except losing a lot of my own divisions (because after all, my foe was defending so it stood to reason I would lose some men).

BTW if you rolled lower than your attack strength, you got that many hits on your foe. You would divide the number of hits by the Fortitude of the army you were fighting--that final number would be how many divisions your enemy would have to remove. Of course as I mentioned, he was defending too, so he did the same procedure and I would be pretty much assured of losing a few divisions as well.

We both ended up by about the middle of 1915 NEVER rolling more dice than would total the strength if we rolled all sixes. Add trenches in the first turn of 1915 and things quickly bogged down.

Though we quit before heading into 1916, I suspect we would have gotten back into massive buckets of dice rolling simply in order to get some real movement in the battle lines--and again, just like what happened in history with generals throwing more and more men into the fight in an attempt to get that always-elusive breakthrough.

I do play games for enjoyment as well as intellectual stimulation, but sometimes the lessons slam home pretty hard.

Very interesting game. Sobering too. The Great War truly changed our world.

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Finally an invitation.

On Saturday, October 14, St. Raphael Orthodox Mission is having an "Invite a Friend to Vespers" night. We usually have a 45 minute prayer service on Saturday evenings as a preparation for our Sunday service. This time we'll be inviting friends who want to know more about us, or about the Orthodox Church, to stop in. There will be refreshments after and Fr. Thaddeus will be happy to answer any questions.

We start at 5:30. Consider yourself invited by me.

St. Raphael is right next to the Busy Bistro on Hampshire.