Obituary of Ida Mae Belle Midthun

Ida Mae Midthun died recently at the age of 87. She was the 4th of 5 sisters. Raised in the Ohio River Valley area of West Virginia during the Depression the family moved frequently due to the financial hardships of the times and the area where they lived. As a result, home and a sense of belonging in a particular place were extremely important to Ida Mae throughout her life. She found both those things in the family farm of her husband when she moved to North Dakota. A true transplant to the area she loved the land and the farm where they raised their family. She met her husband, Gordon Midthun, while he was stationed at an Army Air Base in Ohio, near where she worked during World War II. They settled in Honeyford, North Dakota after his discharge, eventually taking over the responsibilities of running the farm on which he had been raised. She made sure that in addition to the crops there were always flowers growing there. That was one of the ways she created a feeling of home wherever she lived - by planting, tending and nurturing flowers. Ida Mae had a truly artistic eye. She cultivated that vision and creativity throughout her life, applying it to a variety of expressions. She made and decorated wedding cakes; she knitted and did needlework; she did oil painting. The products of her creativity were always a labor of love, most often ending up as gifts to other people. But the most long-lived and consistent expression of her creative spirit was her passion for growing flowers. Wherever she lived she always made flowers grow. They were her primary palate as an artist and brought her the greatest joy. Tragically, Gordon preceded her in death due to a farm accident in 1970. After his death she moved to Grand Forks where she lived for the next 30 years. It was there that she had the first "home of her own". She loved living in that house near the river, and only left when a heart attack forced her to relocate to a one-story house. It was truly a strange twist of fate and timing. Shortly after she moved the catastrophic flood of 1997 left her former home severely damaged. Her new house was miraculously one of only a few in the entire town to be spared from the floodwaters. We jokingly referred to the minor rise in elevation where that house stood as "Mt. Ida". In 2001 she left North Dakota to be near her daughter. She spent the next 6 years in Indiana. In 2007 she again relocated, this time to California, where she could garden year round. During those last 10 years her gardens got smaller and smaller, but she kept "scratching in the dirt", as she put it. This was despite her advanced osteoporosis, which caused numerous compression fractures in her spine over the years. Each time she was able to have them successfully repaired. The most recent one was only 2 months before her death. She had been making steady progress in her physical recovery from the latest surgery when a she suffered a broken hip as a result of a fall. At that point she simply decided it was time to let go. She died peacefully 2 days later. Ida Mae was preceded in death by all 4 of her sisters. She frequently commented, " I just never thought I'd live to be this old! " She came naturally by her sense of humor. Even though she did not get to see her sisters very often, whenever they could be together there was nearly constant laughter. They called themselves The Cackle Sisters. Her wit and feisty non-conformity persisted to the very end, as did her ability to surprise everyone who knew her. She could be an astute observer of people's complexities and had the capacity for great wisdom. She loved to tweak people about their rigidity or their self-righteousness. She was deeply caring, extremely generous, very complicated and a survivor. She had an amazing capacity to keep bouncing back from whatever life rolled her way. She is survived by her daughter, Cammy, who lives in Indiana; her son, Tom and his partner Joann Atkinson, who live in Wisconsin; her son Dennis and his wife Lynn Gordon, who live in California; 3 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren and numerous nephews and nieces. At her request there will be no funeral. The family will have a private burial sometime next spring, when we will lay her ashes to rest next to her husband - and plant flowers on their graves. Memorial donations should be directed to either Hospice of Santa Cruz County, California - or the Reach to Recovery program of the American Cancer Society.