Gertrude Martens’ Eulogy
January 27, 1926-August 27, 2018
Gertrude Esau was born on January 27, 1926 in Langham Saskatchewan. With a blanket it was said that she weighed less than four pounds. She was a fighter from the beginning because according to the weather report from Saskatoon that day, 30 kilometers from Langham, it was between -21 to -26 Celsius. That’s cold. Even if you’re not an undersized baby.
She was the 14th child of Johann Esau and the first child to be born and to survive of his second wife, our maternal Grandmother, Maria Reimer Esau. Mom talked about never wanting to be spoiled or thought of as the spoiled child because she was the youngest when she was little. She was not spoiled; at the most she spoiled her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren at times.
The Esau family moved to BC in 1928 when Mom was a young girl and settled in Yarrow, BC; indeed the Esaus had a role as pioneers in Yarrow, something of which Mom was rightly proud. In 1988, Mom was given a key to the City of Yarrow on the occasion of the town’s 60th anniversary to the people who were there in 1928 and still lived there. When asked what the key got her, she replied, “Nothing. But I’m one of only six to get one!”
Mom grew up in Yarrow surrounded by her loving and large extended family and many friends. Much of the family’s social life surrounded the Yarrow MB church. So many of the pictures of Mom as a girl and young woman show her holding other people’s babies. She loved babies! Mom also taught Vacation Bible School in Yarrow and Sunday school. She loved it, both because Mom loved the Bible and because she loved children. Many of us can tell you from firsthand reports from the girls who attended her Sunday school class how much she meant to her Sunday school girls.
She also went to elementary school in Yarrow and high school in Chilliwack, but her high school career was cut short. Mom was lucky to have such a large family to care for her because as a young woman she lost both her Mother (in 1946) and her Father (in 1947) to cancer. Mom stopped her high schooling to care for her ailing parents, but also took the opportunity to go to Elim Bible School in Yarrow while she was caring for her them.
After her parents died, Mom’s tenacity also came into play. For a lot of people to be orphaned at that age could defeat you or create great bitterness in the face of suffering. Mom’s faith in Jesus sustained her and gave her the will to continue. As a young woman, she went to Vancouver and worked as a housekeeper to support herself, while completing Grades 11 and 12 in one year at Magee Secondary School in 1948. Some will tell you Magee is such a fine school because of its notable alumni, and they are correct: our Mom went there! Mom loved her high school reunions and Dad handed to us the notice of her upcoming 70th high school reunion a couple of days ago, which she would have loved to attend.
But there was something else beyond education in the picture after high school; a young man was now in the picture. Mom apparently had not been that sweet on any of the Yarrow boys, but her mother had told her long before Dad arrived in town that if God wanted her to be married he would bring her someone, even from Russia! There was only one problem lurking down the road, Mom had said that she had a Father named John, her eldest brother was named John, she was not going to marry another John! True love conquers these minor details.
And these were minor details in a relationship that spanned almost 70 years. Mom married John Martens, our father, in 1950 and they were married for over 68 years. This does not mean Mom did not make Dad take his time in their courtship. The first time Dad wanted to kiss Mom after they started dating, Mom said to him, “if you want to kiss someone, go home and kiss your mother.” Good advice. Dad said to Trudy recently that Mom helped him through some difficult times from his early life and that he did not know where he would be without her sustaining love. They truly had a love affair that spanned not just decades but generations. Dad thinks of his relationship with Mom in light of “the wife of noble character” from Proverbs 31, worth more than rubies. Dad describes her character as based on her steadfast faith and that she was a real friend, who never gossiped and always kept confidences. She always, guided by her faith in Jesus Christ, strove to do the right thing.
And a marriage of love like this inevitably leads to children. Mom had five children, though she wanted ten. Marian and Jim were already little tykes when Tilly was born. Mom had become ill and was told that she could not have any more children. Five years later, she was given the go ahead and John and Trudy came along. Mom did achieve her goal of ten children, though, when each of her five children married. She loved her sons- and –daughters –in-law with a passion. And, naturally, when your children marry, that leads to even more children with the coming of 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
But I would think there are even more people out there who might consider Gertrude their Mom. Mom was a nurturer who loved her own children unceasingly and still had room to give love to all of our friends and anyone in need of care and comfort– how many people out there consider her their other Mom? This is the lesson of her love: the more love you give, the more love you create.
One of the things that was an expression of her great love was her great cooking and baking. She loved to cook and bake and her family loved to eat and eat what she made! When you entered her home, or workplace, you entered into the history of the Mennonite kitchen. Piroshki, zwieback, vereniki, borscht, Summa borscht, halapsie, butterhorns. I think we could go on and on with our favorites, such as rollkuchen, Butta zuppe, kottletten, platz, green bean soup, wurstbubbat… but that might be enough to get our memories and taste buds working. Still, how could we not mention her canning? She canned pickles, ikra, peaches, cherries, raspberries, and even watermelon. It’s no surprise that in the Bible Jesus gives an image of the Kingdom of God as a banquet from which many will come from east and west and dine with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob on that day of the Lord (Matthew 8:11). In Mom’s cooking we got a little foretaste of heaven because as good as the food was itself, more importantly is that it was indeed prepared with love.
Mom also worked professionally as a cook and baker, at the Airport Inn in Richmond, at Columbia Bible Camp for 4 years and at the Cedars for 12 years. Cooking and baking were not the only work she did either, as she had numerous responsibilities at Columbia Bible Camp and the Cedars. Dad said that his 12 years at the Cedars were so wonderful because she was the best boss he ever had!
Mom also was one of the first people to be trained in Early Childhood Education in BC in the 1970’s, running a day care center at Richmond Bethel MB Church. Mom was a hard worker, in general, as Trudy recalls Mom getting up before anyone else and going to bed after everyone else.
In her retirement Mom continued to enjoy travelling to see the world and to see her children, who lived spread out over much of North America, and cooking for us all when she arrived in our homes. As she got older and less able to do the things she had always loved to do, she depended more and more on Dad and Marian and Eb and Jim and Nena to help her with her daily tasks and to care for her. But her love for all never ebbed, never left her. Her love seemed to grow in strength as her physical capacities weakened. It never ceased being a delight to get a hug and a kiss from Mom and look into her eyes twinkling with life and love.
But what pulled all of these gifts together, what made her the daughter, sister, cousin, friend, aunt, wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother she was, was her religious faith, that she was a disciple of Jesus Christ. She was involved from an early age with the Mennonite Brethren Church in Yarrow and was baptized in her mid-teens, joining the choir at age 17 in 1943. She continued to attend MB churches throughout the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley all her life, including Clearbrook MB church for the last 22 years of her life. We mentioned above that Mom was a fighter, but what she fought for was the Kingdom of God. That goal transformed her will to survive as a little baby and the toughness that took her through the early loss of her parents into Dad’s sweetheart who loved and loved and loved all those around her.
When we asked Dad for a special Bible passage for Mom, he could not choose one; he said that it was the whole Bible she loved. This was true. Her faith in Christ was an attempt to walk the path of righteousness that Jesus expressed in two simple commands: “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
Mom’s discipleship was made wholly manifest in simply living out the greatest commands: the love of God and the love of neighbour. She accepted people where they were and helped them. She loved God and never ceased supporting ministries near and far or supporting us all with her prayers. From the beginning of her life to the end, on August 27, 2018, she was a woman of steadfast hope and faith and love. But the Apostle Paul asks us not to “grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). And now her life of faith and hope have come to an end and all that exists for Mom is love.
We do not grieve for our Mother as others do who have no hope, though we do grieve for our great loss, because we know that now she is in the presence of eternal love, reunited with her parents, all thirteen of her siblings who predeceased her, and her many other friends and relatives who have welcomed her home. That little baby from Langham, Saskatchewan whom no one was certain could survive that harsh, cold Saskatchewan winter leaves behind a legacy of love of neighbour and love of God, a legacy of warmth that has spread from her family throughout the world.