Marion Elaine Honer

January 21, 1932 to September 7, 2018

Mom grew up on a dairy farm near Spooner, Wisconsin with parents Adolph and Teresa Michel and five siblings Larry, George, Dick, Eugene and Kathleen, as well as a sister, Joan Agnes, who died at 20 months old. Things were hard but filled with fun and laughter as well. At 15, Mom left home to be a nanny for a family in St. Paul which is where her parents both grew up.

Mom's brother, Joseph P. Gross (former professor at the current Dakota College in Bottineau after whom Gross Hall is named) encouraged her to pursue a nursing education at what was then known as the Bottineau Branch of NDSU. Mom did so but, soon after her arrival in Bottineau, questioned the wisdom of her decision, as the winds howled about her, already missing the woods of Wisconsin she was so accustomed to. But she grew to love the beauty of the Turtle Mountains and would go for drives and walks "in the hills" and cross country ski in Metigoshe State Park with Dad.

After receiving her nursing diploma, Mom worked as an RN at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home, as well as St. Andrew's Hospital where she has been a resident for the past 4 years. She met Dad (Donald Bernard "Barney" Honer) from Harvey, N.D., while interning at St. Aloisius Hospital in Harvey. Mom and Dad married on June 13, 1953, having four children between 1954 and 1958. It was in her late 20s that Mom was diagnosed with Type I diabetes and due to being what was then called a "brittle diabetic", she eventually had to give up nursing.

Her talents were many. She loved to cook and bake and, judging from Christmas alone, there was no end to the varieties of sweet things she could make, borrowing from both German and Norwegian influences. At Easter, she was the "Easter Bunny" and not only were Easter baskets hidden for us to find, but she made this wonderful Easter house with a little fence and green dyed shredded coconut for grass and decorations on the roof and walkways, something like a Gingerbread house but with an Easter theme. For our birthdays, she made theme cakes and planned corresponding activities such as a hobo picnic, a treasure hunt and, one time, made a fantastic doll cake with streamers attached from the central cake to individual cupcakes for the birthday guests sitting around our round dining room table.

She loved to sew and made many of our clothes, including jackets and suits for Dad, and knit elaborate patterned sweaters for her kids. She made pottery with her hands and with the wheel, using the kiln up at the college to fire her pieces and began taking art classes and teaching herself in various mediums, including charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, pastels, palette knife, watercolors and oils.

She painted the icon of St. Mark for St. Mark's Catholic Church, after much study and research. She created handmade cards and sewed doll clothes, including little felt garments to cover the naked troll dolls Dad's sister, Marlene, gave us kids, which we still laugh about to this day. She won countless ribbons, including Grand Champion purple ribbons at the County Fair. She did calligraphy, reupholstered furniture, designed valances, made drapes and chair cushions, and quilted totes to protect her paintings during transport. She fashioned Victorian ladies on stands, as well as made pioneer type dolls using pieces of a crocheted tablecloth her grandmother had made, for the doll's dress. One very special watercolor painting was of the four of us in our backyard with our house in the background, all of us skating on the frozen pond that Dad had made by flooding our garden plot during the winter months. In the painting, Mom was peeking out the kitchen window at us. Her last painting she never finished and, finally, my sister framed it as it was, Mom's unfinished symphony in oils, and a bittersweet ending to decades of painting.

She made clay figurines with a cross country skier for Dad and paper mache comical figures, including a downhill skier with crossed skis for me, a Franciscan monk with a silly smile on his face for her brother and even an artist for herself. She made Halloween costumes for us and loved celebrating all the holidays. She helped Dad with projects around the house, such as remodeling and painting inside the house and laying paver blocks down for a patio outside. She gardened and canned and pickled foods, and tended flowers and loved sitting outside in the yard with Dad and listening to the birds and watching the squirrels. However, Dad knew she would go inside at the first signs of "bugs" and would quip "she's just a little house cat". She loved to swim and did so at Lake Metigoshe, Strawberry Lake and Carbury Lake as well as Lake DesMoines where we gathered for a Michel family reunion with her siblings and their children and, eventually, grandchildren, every year for decades.

She couldn't eat much of what she made and strictly followed a diabetic diet with portion control and carbohydrate counts and carefully measured protein. She had to check her blood several times per day, eat 6 times per day with set meal times and walk every day to help control her blood sugars. However, because of the type of diabetes she had, she would often have an insulin reaction before being able to get food and would go semi-conscious, falling frequently, especially in her later years, leading to multiple injuries and fractures. She had a C2 neck fracture, pelvic fractures on both sides, multiple rib fractures, a left shoulder fracture/dislocation that never healed, a skull fracture with a brain bleed that resulted in a useless left hand, and two hip fractures, with the latest trauma occurring just over a month ago. While enduring multiple rehabilitation stays and other treatments, she always seemed to somehow, miraculously, rebound from whatever trauma she had recently sustained. We used to laughingly say she was like the Energizer Bunny or the Whack-a-Mole arcade game where the mole's head keeps popping up and you try to whack it down before it disappears. That was Mom, she just kept popping back up….and never complained.

She and Dad shared a sense of humor that always had them laughing. I came home one time and saw a glossy magazine photo of a polar bear taped to the lower wall in the entry way and wondered what it was doing there. I removed the magazine page to see what was going on and saw it had been covering a hole in the wall. Dad had not yet patched it, but the hole was evidence that Mom, during a fall, had hit her head on the wall and actually broke through the sheetrock. Dad quipped that if we ever needed a wrecking ball to demolish the house, we could just use Mom's head. And Mom would say "oh, Barney", and they would share a good laugh.

That indomitable spirit continued through her countless traumatic injuries that found her in a snow bank at one point, discovered by a passerby who then called Dad, saying "Barney, your wife is in a snow bank" and Dad would go get her. Or she would be found on the cellar floor, perhaps hours after she had fallen, or just falling off the bed might result in an injury. Her injuries became so common place, it became hard to keep track of them all.

She was a woman of faith and lived her faith, showing care and concern for those who were less fortunate and those who were ill. She was an active member of St. Mark's Catholic Church and was always participating in whatever activities were going on in the parish, being part of the Altar Society and helping create banners and environments for the church, as well as bake for and serve during Fall suppers, funerals and other events.

Her legacy will be all of the above living on in each of our memories, inspiring us to be the best we can be. I recall her telling me many years ago of a near death experience she remembered after being in a diabetic coma. She felt drawn towards a bright light along a path lined with faces she knew, including her parents, and others she didn't. As she neared the light, she heard/felt/knew that it was not her time and that a voice was gently telling her she had more to do on earth. She felt herself drifting back towards her body, returning to her physical self and felt some temporary disappointment until she realized that she was where God wanted her to be.

So this time, once again, I believe Mom was drawn towards the same light that she knew to be God and, this time, she was welcomed home. I fell asleep on the train the evening Mom died and was asleep until wakened by the call from my sister telling me she had passed. I like to think I was connected through my dream state with Mom somehow, as I was sleeping at an hour I normally wouldn't have slept. The next morning, upon waking earlier than I would normally wake, I witnessed the most beautiful sunrise in the Rocky Mountains with first sunlight streaming through the clouds above a magnificent lake ringed by mountain peaks. This was a route that Mom and Dad took frequently on their many trips out west to visit me and my kids in both California and Washington, from the 1980s up until 5 years ago. I smiled through my tears as I felt Mom's and God's presence beaming down on me. Later that day, my sister relayed she had witnessed a large flash of lightning the previous night and when hearing when Mom had died, realized it had happened at the same time as the flash of lightning. And as I traveled eastward on the train, I witnessed a beautiful rainbow among the storm clouds at the moment I crossed onto North Dakota soil. All of those events felt like signs to me that Mom is telling me she is at peace, that all is well.

My brother, Bruce, spent much time with Mom in this past year especially, and in these past 2 weeks and final days, particularly. He brought in ice cream, her favorite food, to share with Dad and Mom, who brightened up and, smiling, was able to take a few swallows. Even while facing her own demise, she, the day before she died, barely able to speak above a whisper, was still asking how Bruce was doing and about his day. This is a testament to the type of woman she was. My Dad was with her holding her hand, that next evening, as she passed peacefully to join her Savior.

I hope all of you will feel God's peace in your heart and know that Mom is right where she is meant to be. Honor her memory by living life to its fullest and live with purpose, creativity, kindness, compassion and, above all, faith.