||| Mom's gone fishing
This Sunday, Sue Frase will jig for walleyes while savoring the Mother of all Memories: The day a year ago when she sent her mom to her final resting place in a minnow bucket.
Frase's mother, Edna Varner, an octogenarian when she died in March 2000, wouldn't have had it any other way.
Nor would Frase, a free-lance publicist and former WCCO-AM Radio producer who again this May will not be home on Mother's Day to receive flowers and gifts from her sons, Aaron, 28, and Adam, 16.
Instead, she will be on the water, adrift on a lake somewhere north of Brainerd, looking for fish.
"I've told my sons many times if they want to spend Mother's Day with me, come fishing," Frase said. "That would be the best gift they could give me."
Fishing with her mother on Mother's Day provided Frase with some of her best times growing up in Ogilvie, a small town not far from Lake Mille Lacs.
It seemed only fitting, then, last year when her mother died peacefully at Frase's home that her memorial bear a fishy theme.
"Mom had wanted to be cremated, and when the Cremation Society representatives came to our house for her body, they asked if we had any special clothing we wanted to send along," Frase said. "My brother, Bob, and I said no. Then I asked: "Could we send her ice-fishing jig stick instead?' The guy said sure. So we did."
A few days later, Frase and her brother were beckoned to retrieve their mother's ashes (and those of the jig stick). But they didn't have a vessel in which to carry their mother to Ogilvie for a family gathering -- and then on to Alaska, where she had long wanted her ashes spread in the Tanana River Valley, near where her son, Stu Varner, lives.
"At the crematorium, my brother Bob [Varner of Burnsville] and I were shown some urns. But they were so expensive; my mother never would have approved," Frase said. "So we were standing there, at a loss for an idea, when I said, "How about a minnow bucket?'
'"Perfect,' my brother said. And he drove to a nearby antique shop, where, right near the entrance -- as if it were meant to be -- he saw the ideal bucket: an old metal one, the kind with the holes in the lid."
Frase said she and her brother didn't so much pour their mother into the bucket as they did "just put her in there." Then the two siblings drove to Ogilvie, where at the family's home place -- now occupied by another brother, Kevin Varner -- the minnow bucket was flanked by family photos, yet another ice fishing stick, a flask of blackberry brandy and what Frase hinted was a sort of traffic jam of hot dishes provided by neighbors and friends.
"She loved African violets and orchids, and we had plenty of those around, too," Frase said. "But it wouldn't have been right not to have the brandy. Mom didn't go fishing without her blackberry brandy."
If all of this sounds too Minnesotan to be true, Frase's sons can sympathize. Aaron works for Sun Country Airlines; Adam is a sophomore at Hopkins High School.
The former, like his mother, is an angler; the latter is more into computers than fishing.
"At various times, we've thought about doing an intervention with mom to try to break her away from fishing," Aaron said. "But I guess it's just something she picked up from her mom.
"One time I remember she called me in winter and said she needed help, that she was stuck on the ice on Independence Lake. I had to leave work, drive all the way to the eastern suburbs to borrow a four-wheel-drive truck, then drive back across town to find mom on what was now a nearly dark lake.
"Her minivan was really stuck. But she was fishing, so she was happy. It occurred to me then an intervention might be a good idea."
One advantage Aaron and Adam have on Mother's Day over other sons and daughters is that they "don't have to worry about slipping up and not having a present. She's never home -- she's fishing," Adam said.
Just like their grandmother did on Mother's Day.
After the Ogilvie memorial was held, Stu Varner drove his rental car to the Twin Cities airport, beginning his long trip back to his home in Alaska.
Beside him was his mother.
"He wasn't sure how it would go at the airport, but when he stepped up to the ticket agent, he just put the bucket on the counter," Frase said.
"What's that?" the ticket agent asked.
"My mother."
"Your mother?"
"My mother."
A Northwest Airlines supervisor was called. Discussions were held.
A decision was made.
"They upgraded him," Frase said. "They said they wanted my mother to fly to her resting place first class."
Last June, when the snow melted along the banks of the Tanana River, Stu Varner and his family carried the metal minnow bucket to an aspen grove where wild roses, raspberries, lingonberries and fireweed grow.
There he spread his mother's ashes.
It will be just that scene that Sue Frase will envision this Sunday, Mother's Day, when she bobs on a lake not far north of Brainerd, looking for fish.
"Mom had wanted to be cremated, and when the Cremation Society representatives came to our house for her body, they asked if we had any special clothing we wanted to send along," Frase said. "My brother, Bob, and I said no. Then I asked: "Could we send her ice-fishing jig stick instead?' The guy said sure. So we did."
A few days later, Frase and her brother were beckoned to retrieve their mother's ashes (and those of the jig stick). But they didn't have a vessel in which to carry their mother to Ogilvie for a family gathering -- and then on to Alaska, where she had long wanted her ashes spread in the Tanana River Valley, near where her son, Stu Varner, lives.
"At the crematorium, my brother Bob [Varner of Burnsville] and I were shown some urns. But they were so expensive; my mother never would have approved," Frase said. "So we were standing there, at a loss for an idea, when I said, "How about a minnow bucket?'
'"Perfect,' my brother said. And he drove to a nearby antique shop, where, right near the entrance -- as if it were meant to be -- he saw the ideal bucket: an old metal one, the kind with the holes in the lid."
Frase said she and her brother didn't so much pour their mother into the bucket as they did "just put her in there." Then the two siblings drove to Ogilvie, where at the family's home place -- now occupied by another brother, Kevin Varner -- the minnow bucket was flanked by family photos, yet another ice fishing stick, a flask of blackberry brandy and what Frase hinted was a sort of traffic jam of hot dishes provided by neighbors and friends.
"She loved African violets and orchids, and we had plenty of those around, too," Frase said. "But it wouldn't have been right not to have the brandy. Mom didn't go fishing without her blackberry brandy."
If all of this sounds too Minnesotan to be true, Frase's sons can sympathize. Aaron works for Sun Country Airlines; Adam is a sophomore at Hopkins High School.
The former, like his mother, is an angler; the latter is more into computers than fishing.
"At various times, we've thought about doing an intervention with mom to try to break her away from fishing," Aaron said. "But I guess it's just something she picked up from her mom.
"One time I remember she called me in winter and said she needed help, that she was stuck on the ice on Independence Lake. I had to leave work, drive all the way to the eastern suburbs to borrow a four-wheel-drive truck, then drive back across town to find mom on what was now a nearly dark lake.
"Her minivan was really stuck. But she was fishing, so she was happy. It occurred to me then an intervention might be a good idea."
One advantage Aaron and Adam have on Mother's Day over other sons and daughters is that they "don't have to worry about slipping up and not having a present. She's never home -- she's fishing," Adam said.
Just like their grandmother did on Mother's Day.
After the Ogilvie memorial was held, Stu Varner drove his rental car to the Twin Cities airport, beginning his long trip back to his home in Alaska.
Beside him was his mother.
"He wasn't sure how it would go at the airport, but when he stepped up to the ticket agent, he just put the bucket on the counter," Frase said.
"What's that?" the ticket agent asked.
"My mother."
"Your mother?"
"My mother."
A Northwest Airlines supervisor was called. Discussions were held.
A decision was made.
"They upgraded him," Frase said. "They said they wanted my mother to fly to her resting place first class."
Last June, when the snow melted along the banks of the Tanana River, Stu Varner and his family carried the metal minnow bucket to an aspen grove where wild roses, raspberries, lingonberries and fireweed grow.
There he spread his mother's ashes.
It will be just that scene that Sue Frase will envision this Sunday, Mother's Day, when she bobs on a lake not far north of Brainerd, looking for fish.