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<\/a>We attended sacrament meeting this morning in the meetinghouse that is situated directly next door to the Newport Beach California Temple. \u00a0It was, I thought, a very good service. \u00a0The first speaker, a brother, used two talks from the recently concluded semi-annual general conference of the Church to address the topic of families. \u00a0The second, a sister, spoke with great panache about spiritual promptings, and related some personal stories of her own.<\/p>\n Before attending the Los Angeles California Temple yesterday, we drove to Rose Hills Cemetery, in Whittier, where we visited the graves of my parents. I try to do this whenever I\u2019m in the area. \u00a0And we also took note of the directly adjacent grave of Frenchy Morrell, of whom I\u2019ve written here before:<\/p>\n I\u2019ll mention one particular visit to my parents\u2019 graves, which took place in July 2018. \u00a0I made a note of it here, which is why I remember that specific day relatively well.<\/p>\n The view from their burial place is splendid, and this was a beautiful, clear day. \u00a0We could see the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles off in the distance to the west, and, to the north, the San Gabriel Mountains \u2014 including Mt. Wilson, which I saw every day of my life growing up, with its television broadcasting towers and its observatories (from which Edwin Hubble first noticed the red shift of distant galaxies, thus discovering the expansion of the universe and leading to the theory of the Big Bang). \u00a0It\u2019s a very peaceful place, and I love it. \u00a0The inscriptions on their tombstones sum them up, simply but eloquently: \u00a0For my Mom: \u00a0\u201cBeloved wife and mother,\u201d and then \u201cFamily first.\u201d \u00a0For my Dad: \u00a0\u201cBeloved husband and father,\u201d followed by \u201cA good man.\u201d \u00a0(I once dedicated a book to him with a citation from John 1:47 in the KJV New Testament: \u201can Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.\u201d)<\/p>\n I was happy again that day to see the grave next to my mother\u2019s, on the opposite side from my father\u2019s. \u00a0Why happy? \u00a0Let me explain.<\/p>\n My father died on 30 June 2003. \u00a0My mother died on 11 April 2005. \u00a0I think it was on our first visit to the cemetery after my mother\u2019s passing that my wife and I, driving up the rather steep hill toward my parents\u2019 graves, noticed an elderly man who was toiling painfully up the road. \u00a0We pulled over and asked him whether he could use a ride. \u00a0Yes, he said, he could. \u00a0He was walking to put flowers on the grave of his wife, whose loss, it soon became clear, he still felt with acute pain.<\/p>\n We invited him to ride with us and asked him to tell us where to turn. \u00a0To our astonishment, his wife\u2019s grave turned out to be about four or five feet from my parents\u2019 burial place. \u00a0It was separated from their graves by his own tombstone, with his name, \u201cFrenchy M. Morrell,\u201d and his birthdate inscribed on it but, obviously, no death date. \u00a0We talked for a while, and he spoke movingly about how much he missed his wife, Wanda, who had died in 1985. \u00a0He was horribly lonely, and he longed to be with her again. \u00a0We offered him a ride back down the hill and to wherever he wanted to go, but he had planned on spending several hours there by his wife\u2019s grave, and he declined our offer. \u00a0We never saw him again.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve returned, and I\u2019ve come back alone, many times since then. \u00a0Whenever I\u2019m in southern California, if I can do it, I visit the cemetery. \u00a0Every time for years, I \u00a0looked to see whether Frenchy had finally gotten his wish.<\/p>\n Visiting in the spring of 2013, we immediately noticed that the grass next to my mother\u2019s grave was fresh, and so, with some excitement, I hurriedly walked over to confirm what I suspected: \u00a0Frenchy was gone. \u00a0He had died on 30 August 2012.<\/p>\n I was deeply happy for him. \u00a0After twenty-seven long years of sorrowful separation, he was with his wife again. \u00a0And my faith tells me that he really is<\/em>, not merely metaphorically.<\/p>\n We took some of the flowers that we\u2019d brought for my parents that day and placed them on his grave.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away\u201d (Revelation 21;4).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I was really pleased, while in the Los Angeles California Temple on Saturday, to run into Gurcharan S. Gill<\/a>, who retired many years ago from teaching in the Department of Mathematics at Brigham Young University. \u00a0I hadn\u2019t recognized him, but he came up to me and we had a pleasant conversation in the temple\u2019s celestial room.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to be completely open about my eating habit, an unfortunate addiction that has drawn considerable derision and a fair amount of entirely justifiable condemnation from some of my anonymous online critics. \u00a0Yesterday, for example \u2014 and I\u2019ve resolved to make no attempt to conceal the sordid reality of my compulsion to consume food (and to do it pretty much every day) \u2014 I took my wife and our visiting friend to The Hat<\/a>, on Rosemead Boulevard in Temple City, for lunch. \u00a0While there, openly and in full view of others, I ate a pastrami dip sandwich. \u00a0I\u2019ve been eating their pastrami dip sandwiches since childhood, although that tradition actually began at the location in Alhambra, on Valley Boulevard. \u00a0Only later did my brother and I begin occasionally to visit the location in Temple City where, quite flagrantly, we would indulge our reprehensible appetite for lunches composed of food. \u00a0As justification, I can only offer in my defense that I really like The Hat\u2019s pastrami dip sandwiches, and that eating them once or twice a year is a way re-connecting, in a slight way, with my memories of my now-departed parents and only sibling.<\/p>\n Yesterday evening, upon leaving the temple, we drove down to San Pedro, where we visited the home and studio of an Egyptian artist<\/a> who now lives in the United States. \u00a0He and his late (American) wife were two of our closest friends during the years that we lived south of Cairo. \u00a0The visit was harmless enough, I suppose, but, afterwards, we went out to dinner with him and his daughter and son-in-law and their daughter, and, yes, I relapsed: \u00a0I ate food. \u00a0Again.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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