Obituary of Marit Mooers

Marit Mooers (nee Helgerud) died peacefully at home in Silverwood on Monday 24 February 2025. She was 86.  She leaves behind her three sons Arne (Georgia), Erik (Amy) and Morten (M'Amy), and six direct grandchildren: Maja, Elena, Liam, Bryn, Keaton and Bishop.  Marit was predeceased by her parents, her beloved husband Carl and her two siblings, Arne and Jorunn. 

A private, sensitive and complex person, Marit had a decidedly intellectual bent.  She was born to older, conservative parents in the provincial town of Drammen, Norway not long before Germany invaded that country (and her home); memories from that era remained strong.  Her post-war childhood was one of fussing spinster aunts, the piano, strict but loving parents, woods, lakes and snow, and many small economies.  She somehow managed to convince her father that she be allowed to go to high school (her older sister was not so lucky) and she followed that with a year of business school and then intense work as an executive assistant in Oslo interspersed with self-funded terms at language schools in France and Spain.  In the end, she became fluent or conversant in English, French, German and Spanish, as well as a lively dancer and bon vivant.

In the mid-1960's, for her "final adventure", Marit arranged a berth on a transport ship headed to America and sailed through the Panama Canal to San Francisco.  A few months after securing a job, she travelled overland to Fredericton to visit her sister.  Her future husband Carl noticed a beautiful, exotic young woman waiting at the bus stop with a toddler (her nephew Jorn): Carl stopped his car, aunt and nephew got in, and the adults' fates were sealed.  Though she returned to San Francisco, only a few months passed before she returned, married, took up residence at the hobby farm and started to raise her stepchild Sheila; her own children came soon after. 

Marit worked tirelessly to create a quiet and steady environment for her entire family.  She had an unwavering sense of right and wrong, likely instilled by those religious aunts, as well as an ever-present, ever-dry gallows humour.  She filled the house with beautiful things, beautiful music, books, tasteful art, candles of all colours, and she filled the air with seemingly endless words of wisdom.  Incongruously, dogs, cats, the odd baby goat, a raccoon (and on one occasion, albeit briefly, a horse) might meet you at the door.

Throughout her life, Marit remained loyal to her ring of primary school friends, and, after coming to Canada, to many in Holtville.  She read widely and attentively and offered well-reasoned opinions on world events and on the human condition till her very last day.  She loved her husband and her children fiercely, though kept much close to her heart.  She also loved beauty, which she found in classical music, in art generally, and in nature.  Seeing her take such intense pleasure from the smallest flower arrangement or from the crunch of snow underfoot was a lesson for everyone who noticed.

The family would like to thank the extramural nurses who offered attentive and compassionate care over the last few years.  The program was a godsend.  In lieu of flowers, donations could be made to Hospice House Fredericton or the Salvation Army.