Hildegard Luise "Ericka" Green (2 Nov 1929 - 11 Oct 2015)

Hildegard Luise Green ‘Erika’
Markeaton Crem. October 27th 2015 at 2.40pmFD Wathall’s (Paul)
Good afternoon. My name is Sally Ward and I am an Independent Celebrant. I would like to offer you all a very warm welcome as we gather together in love and in friendship to celebrate, to honour and to pay tribute to Hildegard Luise Green….or mum ..or Nanny Ester, or Chick, or Aunty Ez or even Hilla Pilla …but for today Erika - and to gently say goodbye now that your time with her is over.

It is 33 years today since Bill’s death and it is touching that Erika’s family has arranged the funeral service to take place on such a poignant anniversary.

Today our love and thoughts go out to all of you who been hurt by Erika’s death, but especially to her devoted and heartbroken children Andy and his wife Karen and Becky and her husband Bernie…her grandchildren William and his wife Becky and Kim and her partner Darren…. her great grandchildren Lily and Henry, her brothers Horst and Bruno…her sister-in-law and brother-in-law Christine and Reg, her niece Nicola…. and of course to all the wider circle of family and friends gathered here in her memory.

I will begin the service with a beautiful poem chosen and then adapted by Erika’s grand-daughter Kim.
Today we can remember you
And bid you one last goodbye
Celebrate the life you’ve had
And maybe have a cry …

My memories of you
Will always bring me to smile
If only I could have you back
Just for a little while…

Even if it’s just to see you
Eat that cream cake
Smoke those Park Drive
Or eat that frankfurter sausage!
The fact you’re no longer here
Causes me pain
But you’re forever in my heart
Until we meet again ….
Thank you Kim for writing such a thoughtful piece as a tribute to your Hilla Pilla….
Eulogy for ErikaGreen
When I met Andy, Becky, Bernie, William and Kim recently, it was clearthis was a very painful time as they began to come to terms with the loss of a really special and remarkable woman.

1929: In Britain, George V is King and Ramsay MacDonald is elected Prime Minister; Germany is facing one of its most tumultuous decades. It is still crippled by the debt of the Great War and feeling the ripple effects of the Wall Street Crash; in Berlin there is unimaginable poverty, hunger and instability … Domestos Bleach was first produced; in Frankfurt, Anne Frank is born….. in Bremen bandleader James Last is born….. and in East Prussia on November 2nd a baby girl is born …. Erika.

Erika was born in turbulent times and her childhood was certainly difficult and it was a time she talked about openly. Her father disappeared and her mum remarried. Erika was sent to live with a childless aunt and uncle, Albert and Johanna and she would always refer to them as mum and dad.

She did spend a great deal of her time on her grandparents’ farm in East Prussia. They would get her to help with farming duties. However she did faint when she was told to stir the pigs’ blood for the black pudding and thankfully she was never tasked with that again!

She would recall how her Grandma would make cheese and take it to market to sell. With the money she made from the cheese she would treat the family to strawberry jam…and not just a little jam jar.

She would bring home a bucket…or a pail of the delicious sweet conserve and Erika would recall how she would be waiting back at the farm, with hunks of bread, ready to dive in.

She was inquisitive, spirited and certainly quite a mischief. She would recall how the coffee pot was always bubbling away and there was always fresh bread…which her mum would mark with a cross to show where the loaf was up to.

Fresh bread was irresistible to young Erika and she would cut a doorstep slice and then insert another cross, absolutely certain that her mum would never notice her clever little ruse. Decades later Erika had admitted this childhood misdemeanor to her mum who replied ‘yes, we always knew.’

Then as she became older and started school she moved to Berlin with Albert and Johanna. She could remember her past so well and liked to tell her family her tales of those times.

As a ten-year-old girl, and at the outbreak of war she would remember how Johanna would hide her daughter in the cellar during the day for fear of her being captured by the feared Russian soldiers.

As a teenager she had started an apprenticeship and given her earlier experiences with the pigs blood it seemed strange that she went to train as a butcher! It was wartime and over night her employers, who Erika seemed to think were Jewish, just disappeared…they vanished, never to be seen again.

They were such difficult times and the family went from having an endless supply of good fresh food to facing starvation. One of the relatives told her that if they smoked a cigarette it would stave off the daily pangs of hunger.

Erika took to smoking like a duck to water! From thereon it was rare to see her without she was just about to light up, she was smoking or she had just put one out!

Following the war she was working as an interpreter and stock controller at the military airbase RAF Gatow in Berlin, as part of the Berlin Airlift, one of the first major international crises of the Cold War.

Western Allied Air Forces from America, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Britain flew in emergency supplies. In one year there were more than 200,000 flights and Erika was part of the team that checked and cleared those supplies.

It was her good fortune that British serviceman Bill Green was on hand to drive the items once she had cleared them. He was clearly smitten by young Erika – he lavished her with chocolates, stockings and perfume…all impossible items to obtain under normal circumstances. Initially she rejected his advanced and gave away all his gifts.

However before long she realised she had fallen in love with the Englishman from Derby. She took him to meet her parents and despite facing the distinct possibility that he would be taking their daughter away from them, they welcomed him warmly and with open arms. Johanna especially quickly came to adore Bill and the feeling was mutual.

They married on November 11th 1950 in the army chapel in Berlin and then Bill and Erika came to Derby to begin their new life together.

The family feels that it might have been Bill who suggested that in her new life she could have a new name. Perhaps so soon after the war, Hildegard was too Germanic…so she became Erika….with a ‘k’!It was such a good, strong and happy marriage. They adored each other and were the best of friends.

When they realised they couldn’t have children they were undeterred. They adopted Andy and then Becky. It was never a secret and she told them both just how very special they were, how much she loved them from the start…how they were specially chosen for Bill and Erika to make their lives complete.

They were never in any doubt as to just how loved and treasured they were. Andy and Becky told me that they both felt blessed to have found such wonderful parents.

They shared a fantastic upbringing and although they both agreed that it isn’t something that you particularly appreciate as a child, looking back you can see it was a magical golden time, wrapped in love and care from two totally devoted parents…..parents who really really wanted you in their lives.

They kept in touch with the German side of the family and summer holidays were often spent overseas with their relatives. Becky laughed when she said it was unheard of then, but whilst other classmates were holidaying in the UK she and Andy would fly to Berlin. They both laughed when they said that at the time they really wanted to go to Skeggy!

They remembered trips to the cinema in Derby to see the latest Disney film and then afterwards a visit to the Golden Egg for tea.

Before the children came along Erika had worked as a counter assistant at Woolworths in the town. Then, she didn’t work whilst her children were small – as adoptive parents her family didn’t think she would have been allowed to.

When they grew a little older, and the family moved to Findern, she went to work in the kitchens at New House in Repton School, and where her mum came to live with them for a while too.

Later she went to work at Atken’s Transport Café where she made a great breakfast, always worth pulling over for. Finally she went to work at Nuffield Hospital where for some while Becky was her boss. Becky turned a blind eye to the food being smuggled out for her cats. She had to finish work due to poor health when she was in her early 60s.

Erika did love animals. She prepared a small daily banquet for the wilds birds in her garden – she bought extra bread and then she made them delicate little sandwiches…and for the foxes who visited she made bigger doorstep ones….they were always gone the following morning…and she took no notice of Andy when he told his mum that rats could have eaten them!!

Erika also looked after visitors to her home in the finest German traditions of hospitality and catering. They would always be offered food…there was always cake and visitors would be sent home with something akin to a Red Cross parcel! She loved a baked cheesecake too, which she would buy from a delicatessen.

Erika brought some delicious recipes from Germany – she made a superb dish of Beef Olives and Bernie told me he had rarely tasted anything as wonderful. Her potato soup took hours to prepare but was always so satisfying…worth every moment spent making it.
Lengthy car trips back to Germany would be interspersed with regular stops for picnics of Schnitzel, boiled eggs, meatballs and her amazing potato salad…a recipe she had adapted to take into account the ingredients she could get in England… So it was made with tinned Carnation Milk, gherkins and salad cream. It was brilliant and everyone has tried to copy it but no-one has quite got it.

Erika liked games of chance and had played bingo for many years. She loved a trip to The Hippodrome in Derby. Sometimes she would manage to have six cards on the go simultaneously …but a win was a rarity. She didn’t mind - she just enjoyed going and was perfectly happy to toddle off there on her own.

She liked fruit machines and one-armed bandits. She also liked to have a little flutter on dogs and the family can recall at one race meeting she backed every single dog…so she definitely was guaranteed a winner.

Over the years Erika had lost her German accent and her voice belied only a slight trace of her early years. She was self-determining and endlessly caring. She was warm and loving.

She was houseproud and the family laughed when they said her signature perfume was Domestos…and cigarette smoke! She was renowned for her lines of washing and the cleanliness of her home.

She loved to people watch and was gloriously politically incorrect. If she thought you’d put weight on she would tell you and it wouldn’t be couched in language to soften the blow.

She was a cigarette devotee and the smoking ban was for other people! If she wanted to light up a Mayfair Superking then who was going to stop her??

Erika used to organise trips from the Brook Close Residents Association and Kim recalled going on one of these trips with her Nanny…her Hilla Pilla… to Stratford. She looked longingly at Erika as she lit up another ciggie and at that moment a deeper bond was formed…..’here you go, I know you smoke!’ and they shared their first ciggie together!

It had been hard for Erika when Bill died in 1982. However she never looked at another man…there was one who tried to tempt her with an offer of a trip to Alton Towers…but she wasn’t tempted or swayed. Her heart was with Bill and her love for him never paled.

She still liked to get dressed up if she was going out and loved a bit of glitter …a hint of bling. She liked to wear a dash of pink lipstick and maybe a spritz of Coty L’aimant or 4711 Cologne, which grandson William would try and obtain for her.

Shopping trips were extensive and in Marks and Spencer’s she would visit every single aisle. People who accompanied her weren’t just friends…they were her packhorses …her Sherpas…carting her purchases back to their car. She loved a BOGOF…Buy One Get One Free but rather than keeping the spare for herself she’d give it away.

Despite her age Erika had remained very independent and relied on family and carers to help. However just last month, as she became more frail, she had moved to the Canal View Care Home where she received excellent care. Her health deteriorated further and sadly it was here where she died just a few weeks later, on October 11th.

I asked the family how they thought she would be remembered…so many comments ‘ for her lovely cheeky grin…right to the end of her life…. Her schnitzel, her conspiratorial smile where you’d know what she was thinking and would say ‘stop it Nanny……..”. However more than anything they will remember her love for her family.

Finally Becky asked me to thank her mum saying ‘Thank you for loving me unconditionally and for always being there…my special friend.’

No-one should be afraid of death itself; it is as natural as life itself. All that has life has a beginning and an end, and life exists in the time between birth and death.

The love and kindness in Erika’s life will live on in the memories of her family and friends muchlonger than the sadness caused by her leaving.

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose on earth, a time to be born and a time to die. Here, in this last act – in love and gratitude we commit Erika to her natural end.

Erika, tenderly and reverently we commit your body to the universe from which all life comes and to which, in the end, all life returns – ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
We are grateful for the life that has been lived and for all that your life has meant to us. We cherish the memories of your words, your deeds and your character. We cherish your friendship. And most of all we cherish your love.
Rest now at the end of your days, forever safe in our hearts and minds. Your work here is done.Erika we leave you now in peace.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever. Amen.

Our entry into the chapel today was The Old Rugged Cross, requested by Erika. It was chosen for Bill’s funeral and Erika had always insisted that when her time came, it would be included at hers too.

Now as we prepare to make our way to the exit we will listen to our final choice of music. A performer she really loved, Semino Rossi with a song from Erika’s cd collection.

The family told me it is a song that makes them think of Erika and Bill dancing cheek to cheek, somewhere…together, forever.This is Gracias Fur Deine Liebe.

Dearest Erika, rest easy now in peace. Gute nacht.