Sara Coner Murnane Berg

Aug 2, 1948 -

Jan 24, 2024

Sara passed peacefully at home in Homer, Alaska, on Jan. 24, 2024, with her family at her side. Several weeks before her expected death, Sara wrote the following letter as her obituary:

I was born on Aug. 2, 1948, the fourth of six children in a military family. Many schools, many houses, strict Catholicism, from which I have finally recovered. Two wonderful siblings died quite young and have been greatly missed. Only one sibling survives me, Katrina, who will miss me greatly, as will my sweet husband, Ed, and my amazing son, Gregory.

I have been blessed with an interesting life, filled with fun and adventures, and sprinkled throughout with sorrow. I recently wrote a short book called Kissing Kevin that takes you on one of my earlier adventures as a U.S. Army nurse in Vietnam during the war. It is quite good but might make you cry; it did me. My next major adventure was running a medical clinic in Unalaska, where my son Gregory was born. In the early 1980s I worked in Homer as a nurse midwife and delivered quite a few of our now 40-somethings. Delightfully after my sweet daughter Duffy was born, I opened my homeopathic practice, the Fritz Creek Health Clinic, which I dearly loved. I could effect real change and hopefully helped many readers of this letter. I even fondly remember the hundreds of night calls with the baby screaming in the background and the frantic parent crying into the phone. The best part about that amazing job was that I could be at home with my children, which after all was my most important occupation and the one that I loved best. After the children left, we moved into town and opened an assisted living home, and I was able to provide lovely passings for several very sweet ladies.

Amid the mix of occupations, I was able to do lots of traveling - to Asia and Central America and Europe. We had excellent camping and bike trips around Alaska, being good education for children and great fun for all. At least 15 of those trips were to the Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage in Honduras where Duffy and I assisted with homeopathy for many years, and Duffy volunteered for 17 months.

Well, we are now playing the hospice waiting game, surrounded by loving people, trying to make it as painless and happy as possible, writing obituaries and doing Swedish death cleaning - which I direct with hand waving from my bed - and laughing at old memories. Cancer or heart disease will be on the death certificate, but we all know that the real cause was the loss of my dear Duffy.