“MANNA” IN HEAVEN

MARCH 30, 2020 – If anyone resides in heaven, it’s Mary “Manna” Ibele, a dear old family friend. She died a week ago at 95 after a wonderful life, full of love for all that’s good in the world.

I last saw Manna and Warren, her husband of 72 years, two years ago at a concert in Minneapolis, not far from Ibele’s home. They were as spry of heart and mind as they’d been when I was a kid.

Manna was a close friend of my mother, first in graduate school and later in their work at Children’s Home Society, placing kids for adoption. Their lives continued in tandem—each woman married a similarly large-hearted, curious, cerebral, cultivated man; each had four kids at about the same times.

For years, our families got together at Christmas (Ibeles hosting) and high summer (Nilssons hosting).  The Christmas gathering was the highlight. On the Saturday evening before Christmas Day, we’d pull up to Ibele’s noble house in the Kenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis. Manna and Warren would greet us with enough good cheer to see us through the harshest winter. What impressed me most about them was the sincere interest they took in each of us kids.

Ibeles were the only family we knew outside our own that didn’t own a television.  They didn’t need one. Their home was full of books and interesting stuff, and their imaginations were in perpetual overdrive. Every year each of the Ibele kids had some pet project on full display.

While the grownups caught up on a million things, Manna orchestrated a sumptuous dinner, which threatened to crush the Ibele’s big, sturdy dining room table. And often joining us at that table was one of Warren’s graduate students from some far-off land.

Manna and Warren were a duo to behold. They exuded kindness, humor, intelligence, curiosity, sincerity, and personality, and they magically instilled, then summoned, those qualities among all in their company. They were a perfect match. Manna was pure sweetness and smarts just as Warren was total richness and erudition, like sugar and cream in a Wedgewood cup of the finest Indian tea. Yet, for all their refinement, Manna and Warren were always down to earth. In retirement, they ran the lake resort Manna’s parents had operated near Alexandria. During college days, Manna had worked as a streetcar conductor.

After dessert, Manna and Warren would organize some group activity—often musical, sometimes dramatical, and sometimes, exotic. One year Warren treated us to a slide show of his visit to Russia on an academic exchange. In the course of his pictures and narrative, I vowed that one day I would go to Russia myself. (I later did.)

At the end of a splendid evening, Warren would hand out our winter wraps and words of good cheer, and Manna would distribute hugs that gave greater warmth than all the wool in the world.

Manna, you’ll be missed, but heaven resides in the hearts of those you touched and where your memory lives.

(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)

© 2020 by Eric Nilsson