Marianne Heikkilä brings out Maria Jungner’s silent side: “She let her wounds show” – 2024-03-06 21:50:11

Yle’s longtime TV announcer Maria Jungner died suddenly at the weekend at only 50 years old. He is widely mourned. The announcer loved by Finns had a wide circle of friends. Many have received the news of the death with deep sadness.

Organization director Marianne Heikkilä and Maria Jungner already knew each other from their youth, but became friends in adulthood. Mikko Huisko

Organizational leader Marianne Heikkilä shared an update on Instagram on Sunday in which she wrote about the soul sisterhood shared by women.

– Have a nice journey home dear Maria, Minni, there you go, Heikkilä writes in his touching update on Instagram.

– You were so important to many. Thank you for the spiritual sisterhood we experienced while sharing life’s joys and sorrows. You knew the paths of my brother and my family, we had lived through similar phases and family was everything to you.

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Marianne Heikkilä tells Iltalehte that the women were united by a similar outlook on life and spiritual values. In their friendship, they went through life’s great sorrows side by side.

– You can’t understand this, it’s shocking, Heikkilä’s voice breaks when he talks about his friend’s death.

According to him, Maria Jungner had an exceptional ability to sympathize with the life situations of others. They had known each other since their youth, but became friends in adulthood. Both came from well-known families whose parents did public work.

– We were soul sisters who met in adulthood. We had a lot of things about death and loss that brought us to our knees. Maria miraculously appeared in my life and wanted to keep in touch, Marianne Heikkilä describes.

Heikkilä, who works as a Lutheran priest, blessed Jungner’s father Treasure Elon to the grave. Later, Jungner asked Heikkilä to the first Orthodox Easter Mass of his life. They had a good time together in Matthew Passions and spiritual concerts.

Friendship was maintained by close messaging, where comforting sentences were sent both ways.

– Maria was a light in people’s lives. It is only after death that one realizes how important he was to many. He stopped, listened and was always comfortingly present.

– He himself had experienced unreasonable losses, and maybe that’s why he was able to comfort me so well in my own losses.

A friend for support

During the years 2020-2021, Marianne Heikkilä had to say goodbye to three of her loved ones and close friends, including her father and brother who had a cerebral infarction.

– That also united us, that Maria knew my brother and had walked some paths together with him. He always put comforting songs or texts when I was at my brother’s grave.

“There is no death. I just slipped into another room. I am me. You are you. What we were to each other, we still are.”

Jungner spontaneously sent beautiful pictures, songs or snippets of text that touched the heart.

– They always came towards me like that, and there was a cry.

Marianne Heikkilä sensed that she was living under strong guidance from her friend. Maria lived in her soul both opera, classical and other music and loved being in nature and her family. He especially loved his own sisters, one of whom Heikkilä had the honor of blessing in marriage with an Orthodox father.

Heikkilä admired his friend’s attitude towards life and his positive, hopeful presence.

– Maria was as pure and genuine a person as can be. Spirituality gave him that basic positive confidence and ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

– He didn’t want to remain cynical and bitter in the face of life’s difficulties. He understood that life is limited and that everyone leaves here sometime. Even though he was brought to his knees and experienced great losses, he still did not wallow in grief. Maria always reminded that “that sadness, Manna, does not diminish but changes its shape”. He let the sadness come and his wounds show, that’s why it must have been easy for people to approach him.