Norma Lindborg Berg, 1916-2015

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Image courtesy of Norma Lindborg Berg.

The songbird of Ainsworth has flown.

Or maybe that is not a good metaphor — it's true that Norma loved to sing, and retained her sweet soprano even into her nineties; but "songbird" suggests something flighty and elusive, and that wasn't Norma. She was reliable. She was a worker.

Norma Lindborg Berg was one of the first people I talked to when I started my historical research. She was 93 when I met her. I was a stranger asking for her help; she received me graciously, and spent many hours talking with me about her family, her neighbors, and her long life in Ainsworth. In the process, we became friends.

I admired her. She was intelligent and strong-willed, but with a sense of humor; she was kind, conscientious, and tactful, and cheerful in spite of the difficulties of old age and the troubles she had gone through in her life.

But what I think of most when I think of her is this: sometimes, when we went outdoors, whether to work in the yard or to go grocery shopping, she would stop and look up at the sky — and that cost her some effort, as her spine was bent from osteoporosis, and her eyesight was dimming — she would look up and say, in a voice full of wonder, "What beautiful clouds!" Later, lying in her bed at a nursing home, she would gaze out the window, up to the blue sky and those beautiful clouds. At the age of 93, 95, 97, she was still amazed by the everyday beauty of the world — that really struck me, and stays with me.

Now the songbird has flown, or the worker has left the vineyard, but always, when I look up to the sky and think how beautiful the clouds are, I will remember Norma.