13 JANUARY 2025
Father Terrance Klein celebrated a funeral Mass for lifelong Ellinwood resident Bernetta Oberle.
Death Sets A Thing Significant |
Bernetta Oberle |
Fr. Terrance Klein |
St Joseph Church 13.I.2025 |
Job 19:1, 23-27 1st John 3:14-16 Matthew 25:1-13
It's the length of Bernetta’s life that sets her apart, not so much the details. She was born on a farm north of Saints Peter and Paul. Her father Peter had remarried after the death of his first wife, so Bernetta grew up with a half-brother and half-sister and six full siblings.
Like so many others born on the eve of the Great Depression, Bernetta’s early years were marked by harsh conditions, though in later life she shunned discussion of them. Bernetta never complained about anything, and she wasn’t much at story telling. She would only offer, “Yeah, it was pretty rough.” Bernetta graduated from Saints Peter and Paul School, but did not go on to high school. She needed to care for her grandmother who had been stricken with cancer.
Bernetta married Andrew Oberle on May 20th, 1948, again at Saints Peter and Paul. After that, what can an obituary note except to say that she became a wife and the mother of five children. Of course, it’s the description that’s short, not the doing.
The family tried to follow Andy to the Oklahoma oil fields, but when that didn’t work, he commuted home on weekends. That left Bernetta, who suffered from migraines, to raise her five children largely on her own.
But she did it. Again, the accomplishment doesn’t take much to record, but the activity was extensive. Picture Bernetta, looking out the kitchen window, watching her children and the neighborhood kids enjoy their backyard playground and tree house. Bernetta didn’t like fighting. Sometimes she needed to intervene and paddle children into a corner, there to kneel and examine their actions.
The family spent a lot of time at the lake, because Andy and the kids loved it. Remember what I said about Bernetta never complaining? She was terrified of the water, but Bernetta didn’t let it show. She had a somewhat nervous temperament; parties and crowds didn’t become her. Some wondered if Bernetta didn’t depart, just before her hundredth birthday, as a way of skipping the party.
Think of all the meals Bernetta cooked! Of course it’s the treats that are most remembered. Andy would bring sacks of pecans back from Oklahoma, and Bernetta would organize her kids into a crew that cracked and picked them clean, eager to reap the rewards of German chocolate cake and banana bread. Bernetta sewed clothes for the kids, and she made lots of quilts. She also mastered crocheting, turning out one doily after another.
Emily Dickinson once began a poem with the words, “Death sets a thing significant.” We take note of the last work, the last concerns, of the person who has died: This was the last sewing she would ever do. This was the last book he read.
Here’s the poem:
Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then ‘t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,—
At rest his fingers are.
Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.
“Death sets a thing significant.” So, let’s ponder Bernetta’s last work, her last activity. Death came rapidly. Bernetta became sick and increasingly unresponsive. Within a few days she had died.
Unresponsive to us, Bernetta was alive to her Lord. In those last days she repeatedly asked for her rosary, and even when she didn’t have it, one could hear her say, “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Bernetta would also spontaneously pray an Act of Contrition she knew from her childhood along with the prayer “Angel of God.”
Angel of God,
My guardian dear,
To whom God’s love
Entrust me here.
Ever this day
Be at my side,
To light and guard
To rule and guide.
“Death sets a thing significant.” We naturally note the last things a departed loved one does. But Emily Dickinson’s saying has a deeper meaning. We typically don’t become an entirely different person when death is imminent. Saint John said that “what we shall be has not yet been revealed,” but often how we die says so much about who we’ve become in life.
“Death sets a thing significant.” It revealed Bernetta’s deepest identity. She was a faithful disciple of her Lord. Bernetta had done her best so well all her life, but in the face of death she didn’t review her accomplishments. No, Bernetta turned to her Lord, humbly and confidently giving herself into his hands. That’s the mark of a true disciple, a trusting disciple.
“Death sets a thing significant.” Death sealed so well the life Bernetta had lived. She was the wise virgin, her lamp trimmed. She was ready to greet her Lord.
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