Thoughts on Mom

• Mom was the most childlike and innocent person I knew. It always amazed me how someone could keep themselves so unspotted by the evil influences in the world. She didn’t care much about material possessions or fashions; she valued things that would last, like knowledge and skills and family experiences. She enjoyed learning. When my siblings and I were younger she was always taking us to fun museums or aquariums or libraries to help us develop a love for learning. One thing she did not love was her kids watching too much TV or playing video games. It’s pretty amusing to me the things she did to keep us from having the TV on. On one or maybe even two occasions she actually cut the TV cable with scissors. Once she pulled the Nintendo out of the wall, went into our garage, and threw it as high as she could up onto a storage shelf where we couldn’t reach it. And once she had a handyman install a makeshift device on our TV that would connect or disconnect the TV cable with a key lock. I don’t know if she ever found out that Josh and Jared figured out how to unscrew the box when they were babysitting and then reinstall it before she got home. I think we only did that once.

• Mom was the best grandma. We visited several months ago before my son Cruise even learned to call me “mom” and after a day there he was following her around the house calling her “mama.” AND, when she’d leave to go somewhere he would cry, which he NEVER did when I would leave! I was a little jealous. Her grandkids just loved her. She would take them around and show them all the fun things in her house and they just wanted to be with her.

• My mom loved music. We all know my mom for her music. Because of her, music is such a part of my family’s life. She’d start us all in piano lessons before we even started going to school. She was always encouraging us to learn new instruments and most of all to share whatever talent we had. She enjoyed serving others with her musical talents, and wanted us to have that joy as well. When I was about 12 she became really enthusiastic about learning how to play the harp. She took me to a harp workshop and talked to some harpists about finding a teacher. While we were there I started playing around on one of the harps. She saw me doing that and decided that I would start taking harp lessons with her. Unfortunately, soon she realized she was too busy taking care of us all to devote much time to practicing, and the uber-expense became apparent, so she decided to stop. Well, of course she made sure I continued on and was always an avid fan of my playing, even though I know she always wished she was able to learn herself. However, mom was a fantastic pianist. We’ll always have fond memories of Sunday evenings gathering around the piano and singing as mom played. Whenever our whole family did that I would wonder what the neighbors were thinking. After her initial stroke, the right side of her body suffered some paralysis. The nurses said that if her muscles weren’t active at all they could atrophy and get stiff and it could be hard for her to use them when she recovered. I wanted her to be able to play the piano if she recovered so I would take her right hand and just close and open her fingers to try to keep the muscles active. I’ve always loved her piano hands. They were so gentle and strong and coordinated and they were always working quickly to serve her family. The second day I saw her in the hospital, before she’d been able to move any of the extremities on her right side, I was eager to see her regain the use of her right hand and was holding it and asked her if she could squeeze my hand with it. Her eyes were closed but she weakly and slowly started moving her left hand around. At first I didn’t know what she was doing until she finally found my hand and gave me three distinct squeezes as if to say, “I can’t do that right now, but I want you to know that I want to squeeze your hand, and I love you, so I’ll do it the only way I can.” That was such a good example of the way she lived her life, using whatever she was capable of to show us she cared.

• She was a wonderful mother and friend to so many. We will miss her. We’re so grateful to know of our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Happiness and to know without a doubt that we will see her again.