Freda Flansburg Death, Obituary – Freda Flansburg was born on March 5, 1944, and died peacefully at 12:20 a.m. on Monday, January 2, 2023. She was a true warrior. My older sister Kimberly, her child, died shortly after birth.
She struggled with the loneliness of being a mother of two boys while my father was deployed to Vietnam several times. When our family was destroyed by the weariness of war, she embarked on a new life journey to overcome the many unplanned hardships.
Life became increasingly difficult as we grew older. My siblings, Jeff and John, as well as Jayme and Kia, realized at a young age that our lives did not resemble those of those around us. There was no running water. Indoor plumbing is not available. The going was difficult. My mother worked long and hard hours to provide for us. She never succumbed to the challenges that life threw at her. She was uninterested in us and used our life lessons as an excuse.
Rather, she encouraged us to use our life experiences to help us grow and progress. She, like all mothers, was a motivator. She expected me to set a good example for my siblings as the oldest child. She wasn’t sympathetic when things weren’t going my way. “Opportunities are everywhere,” she would say. Going to school, getting good grades, working hard, respecting others, and seeing where life took you was always the challenge. “The government will never make you wealthy,” she claimed.
“You’ll have to do that on your own,” she said every time. My mother trained as a nurse and spent long hours caring for the elderly in nursing homes. Many of my visits with my mother over the years were to skilled nursing facilities, where she could relax after a long day at work. After years of losing a child, raising five children, being a grandmother to countless grandchildren, and the arduous work of being a nurse, my mother’s body had withered away. Her heart was tired, and her vision was foggy. It’s been particularly difficult to watch her health deteriorate in recent years. Last Monday, my mother took her last breath on this planet. We all know she’s watching over us from heaven, with Kimberly by her side.