Gutke Genealogy

"I'll tell you something about Grandma (Jones).  I just loved Grandma. And in all the pictures we have of her, she looked very stern. But that's because that's the way they always took the pictures! (They had to hold still for so long) and they couldn't smile, you know, and they always looked stern. But she was not that way at all. She was just a darling person. 

When she died, it was at the time they used to always, instead of going to a funeral home, they always had the deceased at the home.  And I can remember it so clearly, because she was the first one that I had ever seen in my life, you know. I was little. I think I was probably four years old when she died. This is my very first memory in my life, was of them going there to the viewing of Grandma. And I could not see in the casket, because it was a lot higher than I was.

So, Dad wanted me to see Grandma, and I didn't know what was going on, so he picked me up and he held me over the casket, and I just have such a memory of that, and it just frightened me to death. It just absolutely scared me to death, and I cried and cried, and Mother said that I couldn't sleep at night, I'd wake up crying and uh, it was just the trauma of it, you know, of the whole thing.

A few days after Grandma had died, and I'll cry when I tell you this, but Mother and I went in to the house, and Mother was cleaning the house for Grandpa. And uh, there was a little pantry that was just off of the ... well, it was a kind of a sitting room and where they ate and everything, you know, it was kind of all-in-one with a little pot-bellied stove there. And Mother was in this pantry, and she was standing up on a chair, and she was cleaning out the pantry. And I was sitting there in this room, and uh, I was sitting on the floor on a braided rug with this leather chair—I had my paper dolls all out in the chair, 

I looked up, and Grandma was sitting there at the table. And she just smiled at me, you know. And I didn't -- I thought that was fine, and I said, "Mama, Grandma's here."

Well, poor Mother, she just about fell off her chair. But to me it was fine!  I mean, Grandma was there, and she was alright, and she was smiling at me! And uh, so, Mother of course, came rushing into the room, and by then Grandma had gone. But that was just Grandma's way of telling me, it's okay, you know. "I'm still alive, there's life after death." And I'm sure that's why she did it.

Mother said after that I never had any problems sleeping.


From an interview with Norma Gutke Ellis at her home in Salt Lake City, Utah on 9/25/2005. Interviewed by Dennis Gutke, Norma's nephew, and Dennis's daughter, Deniane Gutke Kartchner.