ROSETOWN, MB
2016 was quite the year for deaths of famous people that Grandma Wiebe, 88, of Rosetown, “has just never heard of.” From David Bowie and Prince, to Leonard Cohen and Carrie Fisher, literally dozens of pop culture icons Grandma knew nothing about passed away in 2016.
“I listen to the funeral announcements on the radio every day to see if Mr. Hiebert is still with us, or if Mrs. Edna Pankratz made it another day,” explained Grandma Wiebe. “And I didn’t once hear about this David Bowie fellow, whoever he is.”
Mrs. Wiebe’s grandchildren have tried to keep her up to date with all the celebrity deaths, but have found the task to be quite the challenge this year.
“It seems that every few weeks another icon was gone,” explained Sally, Grandma Wiebe’s 27-year-old-granddaughter. “When George Michael passed I played ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ to her, but it didn’t ring a bell.”
Sally said she expected that Grandma would at least have heard of Prince and hoped she’d show the same level of emotion over the passing of the man who wrote “Dirty Mind” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover” as she did over the passing of local farmer Mr. Klassen.
“She must have been living in a bubble for the past thirty years,” said Sally. “It’s funny. She has no clue who Phife Dawg or Merle Haggard was but she had no trouble rattling off the names of at least a dozen local funerals she attended in the last couple months…”
Apparently, Grandma Wiebe would explain who so-and-so was and who their father was and mother was and where they moved after Bible School and where they worked back in the 50s and….
“And the strange thing was,” said Sally. “She could give me all the details about those people…but I hadn’t heard of any of them.”
(photo credit: by mtx/CC)