Claudia Anderson Gieser

Glendive, Montana: Claudia Anderson Gieser, age 65, went home to join her parents and brother on Monday, April 18, 2011 at the Glendive Medical Center in Glendive. Visitation will be held from 8:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. on Saturday, April 23, 2011 at the Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home in Glendive. A Life Tribute Service will be held at 10:00 A.M. on Saturday, April 23, 2011 in the Chapel of the Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home in Glendive with Celebrant Sandy Silha officiating. Interment will be held in the Dawson County Cemetery in Glendive. Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home of Glendive has been entrusted with the arrangements. Claudia was born on August 26, 1945 in Hankinson, North Dakota, she was born the first of four children to Marshall and Ethel (Griepentrog) Walters. As a young child her family moved several times before making Glendive their home, where Claudia attended Dawson County High School. Claudia moved to Laurel, Montana where she was a stay at home mom. In 1986, she returned to Glendive and in 1989 Claudia moved to New York where she worked as a nanny. This job allowed her to travel to different places, which included Germany. In 1992, she returned to Glendive where she met Lawrence Gieser after becoming his mother’s caregiver. A year later they became life partners. Claudia was employed with McDonalds in Glendive until they closed permanently. She had also worked for Grandview Retirement Home and Albertsons for a short time before health issues caused her to retire. Claudia later volunteered at the Attic and Glendive Medical Center where she loved to work at the front desk. She took her volunteer work very seriously. Claudia was a warm, generous and forgiving person who always saw the best in others. She was a proud wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. She had a great sense of humor, was an avid reader, enjoyed crocheting and her new passion of Facebook. She was preceded in death by her parents, and a brother “Moe”. Survivors include her sweetheart, Lawrence Gieser of Glendive; sisters, Cathy Hauck of Coon Rapids, Minnesota; and Connie (Tim) Carroll of Dillon, Montana; children, Georgia (Lon) Brester of Laurel, Montana; Stacy (Dave) Wright of Billings, Montana; Andrea (Bill) Cole of Broadway, North Carolina; Barbara (Manuel) Zuniga of Billings; Roger, JR. (Patience) Anderson of Walker, Minnesota; Dawn (Chris) McKittrick of Roberts, Montana; Sarah (James) Barnick of Glendive; Arvid Anderson of Glendive; thirteen grandchildren; five great grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews. Memorials are suggested to: Glendive Granite, P.O. Box 848, Glendive, Montana 59330 to be used for a permanent cemetery tribute for Claudia. Remembrances and condolences may be shared with the family at: www.silvernale-silhafuneralhome.com Eulogy: Celebrant “Just one more Hi, Just one more good-bye, Just one more moment, Just one more second. Just one more hug, Just one more tug, Just one more kiss, Just one more miss. Just one more flower, Just one more hour, Just one more dance, Just one more chance.” (Alise Ann Heimbecker) At age 65, the death of Claudia Anderson Gieser was unexpected. Although Claudia had struggled with various health issues throughout her life, she had always managed to continue on. Even with the discovery of a heart problem, Claudia was intending to go home from the hospital. But it was not to be. There was not to be “one more hi, one more good-bye, one more hour or one more chance.” It was time for Claudia to journey on. Today we will celebrate her life as we grieve her death. Claudia was the eldest of four children and as a youngster she suffered from health issues, causing her to be held back in the second grade because she missed so many days of school. After the family had moved around several times with her father’s job, they settled in Glendive where Claudia attended Dawson County High School. One memory her sister Connie has of Claudia during Claudia’s high school days is of Claudia and one of her friends spending a lot of time at their house dancing to music. Claudia did not graduate, but she later acquired her GED, and even took some college classes. Her favorite television shows were cooking shows, home makeover shows or others that she could learn from. She was always interested in learning new things and was especially interested in history. Claudia married when she was quite young, moved to Laurel, Montana, and began having and raising a family. In fact, as one of her children said, it seemed that Claudia was always pregnant. She had a special touch with babies, her own and all others. Claudia always said she wanted a brown-eyed baby, and she was partial to red hair. But none of her children had these traits. Nor did they inherit her left-handedness. Claudia had very small hands, and she would double them up into little fists and shake them to emphasize a point she might be trying to make. Her hands and nose were always very cold, but Claudia would just remind everyone, “Cold hands, warm heart!” Claudia’s obituary reads that she was a stay at home mom. That is true but that is not the whole story. Claudia and the family lived on a ranch, and not only did Claudia take care of her large family, she did much of the ranch work including milking and selling the milk, raising chickens, planting and maintaining a garden of about an acre of produce, and taking care of the cows. Claudia claimed her birthrate for calving was better than her husband’s. Her sister, Cathy, says Claudia was a hard worker and the salt of the earth. A favorite memory Cathy has is when she and her new husband were on their honeymoon and they stopped to visit Claudia so Cathy could introduce her new husband to her sister. It was April, and a spring blizzard was going on. When Cathy and her husband got to the ranch, they went into the kitchen. The food in the oven smelled delicious, but Claudia was nowhere to be found. Finally, Claudia came in from outside, carrying a newborn, white faced calf. It was quite an introduction for Cathy’s new husband. Claudia was bemoaning, “why do these calves have to be born when it’s snowing,” as Cathy’s husband was enjoying petting the new calf. Then Claudia told the couple “let’s go, there is another calf coming.” Out they all went. Later, they brought back to the kitchen a runt of a black calf. As they were tending to that calf, the first one died. Cathy’s husband expressed surprise that the larger calf was the one that didn’t survive. Claudia just picked up the dead calf and put it outside the sliding glass doors, remarking, “Well, that’s life!” Claudia, in her way, could be very tough and practical. Having a family to care for required a great deal of cooking and Claudia was an excellent cook. Having a large family, Claudia learned to make huge quantities of food and she never seemed to unlearn that trait. Daughter Stacy remembers her mother cooking for all the holidays, and at Christmas Claudia always had cookies and fudge available for everyone. Another memory of Christmas was a tree with gifts stacked up high around the tree and against the walls. This was due, not only to the number of children in the family, but more because of Claudia’s giving nature. She was always very generous and always keeping an eye out for things she could give as gifts to others. Gift bags from Claudia were legendary. Filled with stuffed animals, toys from McDonald’s, or sets of glasses from McDonald’s, Claudia did not leave anyone out. Various kids and grandkids have complete sets of McDonald’s “Dalmation” items. Claudia loved to crochet dolls and gave these away as gifts also. Her latest mission was to buy things to decorate the bedroom of Sarah’s daughter, Claudia’s granddaughter. Claudia tried to enjoy life. She worked at various jobs, and seemed to enjoy them all. She spent some time employed as a nanny for a family in New York. While caring for the family’s children, she also traveled with them to Florida and to Germany. At McDonald’s, she enjoyed the teen-agers she worked with and came to know. She stayed with McDonald’s until they closed, and she never really forgave them for closing and ending her time there. Her favorite work was the work she didn’t get paid for, being a volunteer for the Glendive Medical Center Hospital Auxillary. She loved her time at the Attic and at Glendive Medical Center, with the favorite jobs being Bingo and popcorn duty. And what do you suppose it was she enjoyed about all these jobs? Well, Claudia loved to talk and visit with people. All these jobs gave her ample opportunity to do that. She could brag about her kids and grandkids, and learn about the lives of all the people she came into contact with. Claudia loved family history. Lawrence and daughter Andrea tell of various drives they took Claudia on, with cemeteries being a favorite destination. She enjoyed visiting cemeteries, seeing and reading the headstones, visiting people she had known, and getting a sense of the heritage that families everywhere have. For Claudia, her children were her greatest accomplishment. She loved to introduce them to everyone she knew, she loved to brag on them, she loved to give to them. Her youngest is son Arvid. Arvid has health problems and Claudia worried about him constantly. He was her “baby”, and always on her mind. Her children laugh though, because Claudia would forget who she was talking with and might call them the wrong name or go through all the names trying to determine which child she was visiting with. There were rough spots in their relationships, but her children found her to be forgiving, supportive, warm and caring. They did not talk politics with her; Claudia had strong opinions and was a liberal. She was generally upbeat and had a great sense of humor, although her kids thought her a bit naïve about some subjects. And if her children were her greatest accomplishment, Claudia’s grandchildren were her greatest joy. When she was on the phone to her kids, she would end the conversation with “kiss my boys” or “kiss my perfect grandchildren”. It is the consensus of those who knew her that when she hooked up with Lawrence Gieser, Claudia found her happiness. He completed her. Claudia and Lawrence met when Claudia was the caregiver for his mother. As they got to know each other, Lawrence invited her to live with him. They became life partners. And along with their love for each other was a special friendship. For nineteen years they have shared each other’s lives. Lawrence put Claudia on a pedestal and they enjoyed the life and love they had together. Lawrence and Claudia would go for drives together in his old beat up Ford. Claudia was prone to panic attacks, and on one drive to Intake, as Lawrence was going up the big hill, Claudia had an attack and demanded he to stop and back down the hill. Lawrence was almost to the top, and he couldn’t see doing that. That was one drive that did not end well. Lawrence could also push Claudia’s buttons when he would talk about his hair, or his “locks” as he would refer to it. Claudia would just roll her eyes. Claudia loved animals, birds, ducks, cats, to which she was allergic to, and dogs. Lawrence tells that she had her cats, and then she set out food for the neighborhood cats and any strays, and would keep an eye on the cats and kittens in the neighborhood and worry about them all the time. She called Arvid’s dog her grandpuppy and when she was around dogs, she would visit with them just as if they were a person. Claudia enjoyed her flowerbeds. She once lived in a house on the Circle highway, and her goal was to cover the hill it was on with wildflowers. She loved a landscaped yard. Claudia had a green thumb and could make anything grow. When it came to people, Claudia had no prejudices. Claudia was very superstitious, as was her mother. Claudia liked her tea, her snacks, her juice. The only music she wasn’t particularly fond of was country western music. Her favorite music was classical and rock and roll. Claudia loved riding the train. When Claudia was raising her family, Stacy remembers riding the train on different occasions to Minnesota to visit family. More recently, when son Roger was in the Navy and stationed in Bremerton, Washington, Claudia rode the train out to visit him for a week. For Claudia’s 60th birthday, the children went together and gave her a trip to North Carolina to see Andrea. Claudia and Lawrence spent two weeks visiting Andrea and her family and seeing the sights. Claudia’s passion in life was books and reading. She often had two or three books going at the same time. She shared this passion with Andrea and they kept up on what the other was reading or had read. Lawrence says Claudia has quite an extensive collection of books. Her newest passion was her computer. Sara introduced Claudia to the computer and wished she had done so much sooner as her mother took to it like a duck to water. Claudia had trouble sleeping and Lawrence would find her Facebooking or playing games at all hours of the night. Claudia loved Facebook where she could socialize and visit and see everyone’s photos and show off hers. She made new friends. She clicked “like” about everything on the Facebook pages. She enjoyed games like “Cityville.” Sara had subscribed for the first level but Claudia soon mastered that and Sara had to get the unlimited level. When Claudia didn’t understand something or had a problem with the computer, as we all do, Sara, or sometimes Andrea, would get a call. How long did Claudia have a computer? Only about a month, but she really got into it! Who knows what cyber worlds she would have ventured into given time. But time ran out for Claudia. Although death ended her life, it does not end her relationships with those around her. In the hearts of those who love her, Claudia will always be a life partner, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a sister, an in-law, a friend. Claudia Anderson Gieser will be greatly missed. Let us now spend time with our personal thoughts of Claudia as we listen to a song chosen by her family.

Claudia Anderson Gieser

August 26, 1945 - April 23, 2011

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Claudia Anderson Gieser

August 26, 1945 - April 23, 2011

What We Do

Flowers & Gifts

Plan Ahead

About Us

Resources

Obituaries

Grief & Healing

Contact Information

365 Days of Grief Support