Storytime people: My great-grandmother who died in 2013 at the age of 99 was born during the last years of the Russian Empire. She lived in Karelia where they ran a bakery with her husband prior to the war. Her husband died during the war (though not in combat, he was in the army but suffered a stroke). She and her friends. like many others, had to move out after the war (because her home region was on the Soviet side of the post-war border) and they re-settled in Helsinki, where she went to work for a bakery and raised her 2 kids alone as a single mother, never re-marrying as a devout christian (although interestingly enough she did convert from the Eastern Orthodox variety to the more common Lutheran faith, probably to fit in better). Both of her kids died when she was still alive, though both lived to a relatively old age of around 60s, but at that point she altready had grandkids, grandkids' kids, and even a few of those had their own first childten. This may explain why, despite losing her husband and her own kids, she never once seemed bitter or angry, having 4 generations of kids to visit her.
Towards the end of her life she was almost entirely deaf and had very poor vision, but she still lived in her small apartment that she had lived in since the 60s, and still actually baked which to me was amaizing. A woman of a small stature (~155 cm) but nevertheless commanding presence, like small spruce that will not yield under massive snowfall, she always had a glimmer in her eye. This small and hardy baker from Karelia lived through the rise and fall of the soviet Union, our own civil war, the 2nd world war, saw her place of birth lost to another nation, the beginning and the end of the cold war, the birth of the European Union, a massive jump in technology, and yet never looked back at history or the future with horror but with hope.
I have massive respect for those who made the greatest sacrifice in the war to keep us independent. But what we need to remember is that that is only the halfpoint of the story. The men and women who survived, and, despite the trauma and the massive loss, didn't give up but kept going, rebuilt large parts of the country and the economy, paid the war reparations to the Soviet Union and laid the foundations of the modern welfare state (which we're all beneficiaries of) are just as big heroes as all those who gave their blood to defend this beloved northern corner of ours. So I ask you my fellow countrymen: since independence day is just around the corner, and since the celebration of independence day tends to be heavily concentrated from the media side on the remembering of veterans and the war, do not forget men and women like Outi, without whom most of us writing here today, sipping our lattes and surfing on our phones while worrying about relatively everyday things, would be massively more fucked.
naidusa on November 30th, 2018 at 07:58 UTC »
And if I may add, Finland became an independent country 100 years ago, which is pretty recent if you ask me.
Amazing how fast times flies from there to now.
ingeniouspleb on November 30th, 2018 at 09:42 UTC »
Länge leve Finland våran älskade kusin och vän i mörkret!
Long live Finland, our beloved cousin and friend in darkness!
ZenOfPerkele on November 30th, 2018 at 10:32 UTC »
Storytime people: My great-grandmother who died in 2013 at the age of 99 was born during the last years of the Russian Empire. She lived in Karelia where they ran a bakery with her husband prior to the war. Her husband died during the war (though not in combat, he was in the army but suffered a stroke). She and her friends. like many others, had to move out after the war (because her home region was on the Soviet side of the post-war border) and they re-settled in Helsinki, where she went to work for a bakery and raised her 2 kids alone as a single mother, never re-marrying as a devout christian (although interestingly enough she did convert from the Eastern Orthodox variety to the more common Lutheran faith, probably to fit in better). Both of her kids died when she was still alive, though both lived to a relatively old age of around 60s, but at that point she altready had grandkids, grandkids' kids, and even a few of those had their own first childten. This may explain why, despite losing her husband and her own kids, she never once seemed bitter or angry, having 4 generations of kids to visit her.
Towards the end of her life she was almost entirely deaf and had very poor vision, but she still lived in her small apartment that she had lived in since the 60s, and still actually baked which to me was amaizing. A woman of a small stature (~155 cm) but nevertheless commanding presence, like small spruce that will not yield under massive snowfall, she always had a glimmer in her eye. This small and hardy baker from Karelia lived through the rise and fall of the soviet Union, our own civil war, the 2nd world war, saw her place of birth lost to another nation, the beginning and the end of the cold war, the birth of the European Union, a massive jump in technology, and yet never looked back at history or the future with horror but with hope.
I have massive respect for those who made the greatest sacrifice in the war to keep us independent. But what we need to remember is that that is only the halfpoint of the story. The men and women who survived, and, despite the trauma and the massive loss, didn't give up but kept going, rebuilt large parts of the country and the economy, paid the war reparations to the Soviet Union and laid the foundations of the modern welfare state (which we're all beneficiaries of) are just as big heroes as all those who gave their blood to defend this beloved northern corner of ours. So I ask you my fellow countrymen: since independence day is just around the corner, and since the celebration of independence day tends to be heavily concentrated from the media side on the remembering of veterans and the war, do not forget men and women like Outi, without whom most of us writing here today, sipping our lattes and surfing on our phones while worrying about relatively everyday things, would be massively more fucked.