Jerry Timmerman

Jerry Timmerman

Lovingly Remembered

“Jerry” (Gerard) Arthur Joseph Timmerman, was born May 8, 1954 at Swan Lake, MB.  He passed away on August 26, 2010 at Swan Lake, MB at the age of 56 years.  He was a devoted husband, father, grandpa, son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle and friend.

Jerry leaves to grieve his sudden passing and to remember him always, his wife Judy (nee Wood); daughter Jerri-Ann and husband Mel Toews and their children Nathanael, Kameron and Jaymes; son Byron and wife Tammy Timmerman and their son Titus; son Jonathan and wife Vanessa Timmerman and their son Dominick; parents Andre and Evelyn Timmerman; three sisters:  Joyce and husband Albert Zeghers, Karen and husband Dennis Dearing and Kathy and husband Danny De Cosse; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Jerry’s family will be carrying out his wishes by having a private family service on the farm, to honour and remember his life.  His wishes were to be cremated and his ashes will be spread on the field where he so loved to work.

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven;  A time to be born, and a time to die; …a time to weep, and a time to laugh.  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2,4

I wasn’t ready for this loss, Lord.  I wasn’t prepared for how much this would hurt.  And even though I have entrusted my loved ones to you, knowing they belong to you, this parting is deeply painful.  I realize that the passing of your children from this earth and into your heaven is a cause for rejoicing, but those of us who are left waiting here can’t help but weep.  How we miss them!  We wait for the day when you’ll turn all our mourning into laughter.  Until then, we seek your comfort.  I seek your comfort and need you to hold me close as I mourn in the shadowy valley of death.

Adam’s Funeral Home of Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba in care of arrangements.  Phone 248-2201 or 1-888-400-2326.  www.afh.ca

To the very end of his life, our father was a farmer.  For Jerry, there was nothing else; no other calling had any more value, worth or meaning than farming.  He was as rooted into the black soil that he farmed as were the crops that he raised year after year.

For Jerry, farming wasn’t a way of making a living or getting ahead financially.  Farming was life.  Farming gave him everything; food, clothing, shelter, hard work, leisure, love, children, grief, fear danger, triumph, hope.  The only act of infidelity for which Jerry could have ever been accused and found guilty of, was a love affair with Mother Earth.  And yet she could dash his hopes, change his mind, defeat his purposes.  He loved her with a passion, and his greatest moments of triumph, his highest achievements, were those times when she would return a harvest so bountiful his bins couldn’t hold it.

We admit our view of Dad has come off as a bit romantic, a bit flowered.  But there would be no music, no literature, no medicine, if not first there was farming.  Farming is the guarantee, the security, that gives us time to pursue all else.