Lorraine Hengen

With thankful hearts for a life well lived, we share the death of our Mom, Grandma and Great Grandma, Lorraine Hengen (Tholl). Mom passed away very peacefully. We are truly thankful to our nurses, Rhonda Sangster with Stoughton Home Care and Jenny Patterson palliative care coordinator that supported us in the last weeks. We also could not have managed over the past months without the assistance of Courtney Dayman. You certainly had a special bond with our Mama. Between family members and you three ladies, Mom could remain living with family until going to her eternal home and for that we are forever grateful.

Mom was the youngest child of John and Antonia (Poetsch) Tholl. All of Mom’s 13 siblings predeceased her. She grew up in the Clayton District and completed her education in Clayton and later Windthorst, prior to attending teachers college. Mom spoke fondly of her brief time teaching; she enjoyed attending school concerts and open houses at the schools to see what her grandchildren were learning and involved with. Once a teacher always a teacher!

While Mom and Dad met in a catechism class when they were 8 years old, they did not begin their courting relationship til they were young adults. We remember Pops saying that Mom fed him popcorn at a ball game, and the rest as they say is history! Mom and Dad were married July 15, 1953 and shared 67 years of married life. Quite an accomplishment and they were able to be together until Dad passed away in March of this year.

Mom’s dementia impacted so much of the life she and Dad shared. They were fortunate to move into NHPL in Stoughton, together in 2017. The friendships she developed with the residents and staff at NHPL remained up to her passing and we sure appreciated the visits, messages and calls to see how she was doing over the past months. God bless you at NHPL.

Growing up, we likely did not always appreciate the direct and straight forward nature of our Mom. I am sure all of us, and many of you, have stories of Mom saying or doing things that put us in our place. She wanted us to achieve our best and use our gifts to develop our potential. If you scored a 96% on a test she would ask what happened with the other 4%! Mom was a consistent fan at our sporting events growing up and she and Dad were regular features at the music festivals that her children and grandchildren participated in. I think many can picture them in the back short pew of the United Church, program in hand writing down all the marks when the festival was held there. Mom volunteered in her community teaching catechism in St Pius as well as taking executive positions with the Windthorst Skating Club for many years. She wanted to be involved in what we were doing and we knew that.

Mom had so many talents! She had a terrific sense of humor! She loved sarcasm and using her eyes to make a point. She was an excellent baker and cook (did you ever have her potato salad), she enjoyed starting plants for a tremendous garden and then turning the produce into delicious canned goods for the winter. Mom could harmonize and play piano by ear. She had a flair for writing and for a number of years wrote a poem for the ladies bonspiel in Windthorst. Mom would attend the curling games, learning the names of curlers and watching for stories from the bonspiel to add. She would turn those things into a poem, hilarious in nature, and we loved reading them. In the late 1950’s, Mom was part of the Windthorst Little Theatre group. She loved theatre and I am sure she would have continued on with this if we kids were not little at the time. I think all of us kids got some of the best parts of Mom, maybe some of the direct straight forward parts too!

Mom and Dad raised us 5 children, working hard on the farm. Mom raised poultry as an extra income source for many years. Chicken doing days were a lot of work, with everything done by hand, but they were great days. Many nieces, nephews and friends helped out on some of those days. The biggest year of raising chickens saw 2000 birds! Often Mom magically had a delicious beef stew in the oven for lunch, and occasionally a meal out after as a real treat. In the late 1970’s Mom started work as a Statistics Canada interviewer. She really enjoyed that work, and caught on to using a computer quite readily. During interview week she made many miles around the countryside, completing interviews meeting people from so many areas. She was proud of the work she did to gather the data Stats Can utilized.

As happens with families, we soon grew to include in-laws, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It was a devastating blow for Mom and Dad when our sister Joanne died suddenly in 2004. It really showed us the faith they have and it gives us comfort to know that Joanne was there with Dad to greet Mom when she went to her heavenly home.

Those of us left to remember and celebrate Mom's life include her children and their spouses: Tim (Laura), Michael (Dede), Danny (Susan), Monica (Ron) and son-in-law Gerry; 20 grandchildren; 38 great-grandchildren. Mom is also survived by her sisters and brothers-in-law Bernadette Tholl, Lynn Parsons, Yvonne Hengen and Edward and Francis Hengen.

With both Mom and Dad coming from large families, Mom is remembered by a multitude of nieces and nephews from both the Hengen and Tholl families. Over the years, she certainly enjoyed a visit with you and the cards and letters you sent helped her stay in touch with the goings on in your lives. Thank you to those that made time to visit over the 4 years that she and Dad lived together in long term care in Stoughton. Last December many of you sent a video clip for Mom’s 90th birthday. She absolutely loved watching that, and you could see she was pleased that people were sending those wishes for her!

Dementia is such a strange thing. Little by little the Mom we knew, changed. She had started more of a decline the summer of 2020 then after Dad passed away, her decline increased. We made the decision in June 2021 for Mom to come out to Corning for a summer holiday to be with family. It became obvious that Mom’s health was continuing to decline so we made the decision to have her stay at home permanently. The last months for Mom were spent with lots of family visits and enjoying as many good days as possible doing the things many of us take for granted. Visiting over coffee and a cookie, taking a car ride and having an ice cream, baking and canning, spending time holding new babies, visiting with toddlers and young kids and enjoying the company of grown up children and grandchildren. Mom’s dementia definitely changed how we interacted and we needed to see the new beautiful parts within her. Many things about Mom’s personality remained for her and a few were her sense of humor, her determination and her love of talking to babies! I found this little quote about dementia and thought maybe it was appropriate for Mom.

“My eyes do see, my ears do hear. I am still ME, so let’s be clear. My memory may fade, my walk may slow, I am ME inside, don’t let me go.”

We love you Mom and we will meet you again on the other side.

Donations in memory of Lorraine may be made to Newhope Pioneer Lodge Activity Fund, Box 38, Stoughton, SK S0G 4T0 or to the St Pius Cemetery Fund.

A visitation was held in St. Pius R.C. Church, Windthorst, SK on Tuesday, November 9, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. The funeral mass was celebrated in St. Pius R.C. Church on Tuesday, November 9, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. with Rev. Francis Hengen officiating. Interment followed in the St. Pius Parish Cemetery.

Livestreaming of the mass will be available with the link that is posted below.