Barbara Jean Marie DeCann

Funeral services for Barbara DeCann, formerly of Osakis, will be held on Tuesday, December 3, 2024 at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Osakis at 11:00 AM, with burial at Calvary Cemetery. A public visitation will take place one hour prior to services at the church on Tuesday. 

Barbara Jean Marie DeCann, 87, made her peace with the world and quietly slipped away on November 25, 2024. Her departure was masterfully executed and typical of her iron will; our mother wanted all of her children together and home for one last holiday season. While all of us are deeply saddened by her passing, we are also not convinced that this is just an elaborate plan to get out of baking us the platters of Christmas cookies we have come to expect. Well played Mom.

Mom was born on March 22, 1937 in Canyon, MN. The daughter of Onesime and Orise Bruneau, she was the thirteenth of sixteen children. She was orphaned at the age of three. After graduating elementary school, high school and the school of hard knocks, she briefly entered the Convent but soon found that was not to be her calling. On October 20, 1960 she married Donald Eugene DeCann, of Osakis, MN and found her place as a wife, mother, and grandma. 

Faith and family were her passions and the skills, hobbies, and interests she cultivated over her lifetime reflected that. She loved travel, exotic food, and exploration. Our childhood with her was a series of adventures, big and small. She was practically-minded and quality-focused, and knew that homemade trumped store bought every time. She taught herself to sew, embroider, knit, crochet, bake, and preserve - and in these skills she excelled. But she failed miserably as barber and certainly as a hairstylist, proof of which has been ruthlessly documented across years of family pictures and school portraits. 

She loved to grow things. She could take a leaf from a plant, transport it home in a wet paper towel, put it on toothpicks in water, sprout it and grow an entirely new beautiful plant. She loved her garden and she loved for us to spend hours and hours in the grueling Minnesota heat and humidity weeding the acres and acres of that garden with her. 

She was a self-taught mechanical wizard. There wasn’t a car, bicycle, swing set, or toy that she couldn’t take apart, fix and put back together better than before. She was not an overly patient woman, but she was blessed with an orphan’s self-reliance, a mule’s stubborn spirit, a sailor’s vocabulary, and an extra set of eyes on the back of her head. All of which served her well because her children were the ultimate in “some assembly required."

Mom could pack anything like a boss. She could eyeball an incredible load of stuff and systematically rearrange it like a genius working a Rubik’s cube. 

We have since come to understand this skill was born out of necessity - the woman was a collector of the first order. If you, or anyone you know, has need of a case of battery operated camping lanterns, please contact a member of the family immediately following the service. 

She took fashion cues from no one. Her signature everyday look was a t-shirt or sweatshirt depending upon the season. For years she took pride in never needing a coat or wearing boots even in the coldest of Minnesota winters. This drove our Dad crazy and we can state with relative confidence that this knowledge kept her warm in the coldest of conditions. 

She rarely held back her opinion, telling it like it is or at least how she saw it. She sugarcoated nothing. As her children, we knew where we stood with her and she either approved of our behavior or she didn’t. Frequently, she didn’t. With words of encouragement, wisdom and love, she kept us in line, or at least tried to. It is with fond memories and with a particular point of pride, that we recall how we could rile her to the point of forgetting our names.

She was not funny, but desperately wanted to be. She had no sense of comedic timing or rhythm and she couldn’t tell a joke or a story because she inevitably would mix up the details or forget the punchline. In a family of clowns, this provided hours of fun, often at her expense. She loved animals of all kinds and for the majority of her life she was never without one or twenty. Domestic, exotic, or barnyard - all of them shared her home and her affection.

Her love for us was perfectly imperfect and without a doubt a constant in our lives; we are all the better for having been born into this world with her as our Mom. 

She leaves behind 7 children: Leo, Anita, Mary (Jeff), Valerie, Jim (Jenny), Bernadette (Matt), and Suzanne; 20 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren. She is preceded in death by her husband of 49 years, Donald; her son, Joe; two sons-in-law, Doug and Brian; and two grandchildren, Hazel Anne and Isaiah. 

In lieu of flowers, everyone who remembers Barbara is asked to celebrate her life in their own way. Praying the Rosary, visiting a thrift store and purchasing something pretty that you neither need nor have room for, or adopting a homeless dog, cat or Guinea pig, in her memory, would all be quite appropriate.