![\"A](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/05\/393px-Red_rose.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is probably going to be an annual tradition for me. \u00a0Maybe it already is.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t expect anybody else to read it or even be interested in it, but here, for Mother\u2019s Day, is the tribute that I wrote for and \u2014 despite the fact that I\u2019m an unemotional Scandinavian type \u2014 that I read very poorly\u00a0at the funeral of my mother, Berniece Peterson, who died on 11 April 2005.\u00a0 I want\u00a0to praise her publicly on this particular day, and to let it be known how much I still love and miss her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here it is:<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>
My very earliest memories of my mother, I believe, are of traveling with her to serve others.\u00a0 She worked from early in the morning until she could work no longer, late at night, to serve not only her family but other families.\u00a0 She was fiercely devoted to her family.\u00a0 Not only to her own children and grandchildren, but to her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.\u00a0 It was appropriate, at the end, and well deserved, that others should step forward to help her.\u00a0 And I thank Virginia, and Meli, and Tom, and Angelina, from the bottom of my heart, for their kindness to my mother when Debbie and I were simply too far away to be able to do any good.\u00a0 I also thank my brother Kenneth, on whom too much of the burden rested.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I could not have asked for better parents.\u00a0 I cannot count the times when doors opened for me, or trust was established, or compliments came raining down, simply because someone realized that I was \u201cCarl and Berniece Peterson\u2019s boy.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n When I was growing up, Mom was always looking for experiences that she could give to me.\u00a0 We visited Mount Palomar Observatory, the observatories and television broadcasting facilities on Mount Wilson, the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the nuclear cargo vessel SS Savannah, Vandenberg Air Force Base.\u00a0 She insisted that I go to Hawaii with her and my dad, the first time they ever went.\u00a0 I was the only child in the group.\u00a0 Many years later, on their first Caribbean cruise, she took me along.\u00a0 She sent me to Mexico and, years before she herself was able to go, to Europe.\u00a0 She and Dad resupplied my Boy Scout troop at the midpoint of our fifteen-day backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevadas and were there to pick me up at the end.\u00a0 When, in my early teens, I decided that I wanted to learn how to have \u201cclass\u201d\u2014I\u2019m not exactly sure what I meant by that\u2014she saw to it that we went out to a string of nice restaurants for fine meals.\u00a0 The set of World Book encyclopedias that she bought many years ago, when money was tight, may well be responsible for making me into the academic bookworm that I am today.\u00a0 I read them constantly.\u00a0 Voraciously.\u00a0 Every single day.\u00a0 The swimming pool that she had installed in the backyard when I was five gave me a sport that I have loved ever since.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I cannot possibly repay, or even recount, the debt that I owe to my mother.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I also can\u2019t begin to list the pranks and practical jokes she pulled and the stories she told.\u00a0 They were legion. Or the crafts she practiced and mastered. Or the things that she collected.\u00a0 She was always buying things that she thought were cute.\u00a0 Not only for herself, but, very often, in multiple copies, for others.\u00a0 I will never forget vacations at the desert and the beach.\u00a0 Even today, when we\u2019re driving I-15 through the desert separating St. George from Los Angeles, I tell my wife and kids to put their hands over their hearts, just as Mom always jokingly had me do, when we pass the turn-off for the old camping site at Afton Canyon.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In the days immediately before and just after my father died, nearly two years ago, the words of a hymn that had never been among my favorites kept recurring to my mind:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;<\/span><\/p>\n The darkness deepens.\u00a0 Lord, with me abide!<\/span><\/p>\n When other helpers fail and comforts flee,<\/span><\/p>\n Help of the helpless, O abide with me!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Swift to its close ebbs out life\u2019s little day;<\/span><\/p>\n Earth\u2019s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;<\/span><\/p>\n Change and decay in all around I see;<\/span><\/p>\n O thou, who changest not, abide with me!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I was somehow not surprised to hear the melody of that hymn come through the hospital sound system while we watched my mother\u2019s pulse dwindle, more quickly than we had expected, to the thirties, then to the twenties, and, finally, to zero.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n More and more of the people who were fixtures in my life have been passing from the scene.\u00a0 Titanic public figures like Ronald Reagan.\u00a0 (I was in his presidential library when word came of his death.)\u00a0 The great recent Pope, who was elected, a vigorous and relatively young man, at about the same time Debbie and I were married.\u00a0 Hugh Nibley, who had such immense impact on my life\u2019s work.\u00a0 My mission president, whose funeral was on Saturday.\u00a0 My parents\u2019 dear friend and one of my favorites, Spencer Smith. My Uncle Clarence.\u00a0 My Uncle Jack.\u00a0 My father.\u00a0 And, now, finally, my mother.\u00a0 I\u2019ve thought of the melancholy passage in Edward Fitzgerald\u2019s version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in which the poet, speaking of God, says that we are<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays<\/span><\/p>\n Upon this Checquer-board of Nights and Days<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,<\/span><\/p>\n And one by one back in the Closet lays.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n But, if the prophets are to be believed, this is not all there is to the story.\u00a0 Where are Mom, and Dad, and so many of their friends and members of their families?\u00a0 As the Book of Mormon prophet Alma said,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Now concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection\u2014Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life.<\/span><\/p>\n And then shall it come to pass that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.\u00a0 (Alma 40:11-12.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But that, too, is not all of the story.\u00a0 In the vision of the redemption of the dead that was given to President Joseph F. Smith on 3 October 1918, he \u201csaw the hosts of the dead, both small and great,\u201d eagerly anticipating the day when \u201ctheir sleeping dust\u201d should \u201cbe restored unto its perfect frame, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the flesh upon them, the spirit and the body to be united, never again to be divided, that they might receive a fullness of joy.\u201d\u00a0 (Doctrine and Covenants 138:11, 17.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Looking forward to that still-future day, Alma testified that<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.\u00a0 (Alma 40:23.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n What assurance do we have that this is true?\u00a0 We have the assurance that Jesus Christ himself has already pioneered the path for us.\u00a0 The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians not many years after the Savior\u2019s resurrection, reminded them of the multiple witnesses, mostly still living in his day, who could testify to what they had seen:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas [Peter], then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.\u00a0 After that, he was seen of James, then of all the apostles.\u00a0 And last of all, he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.\u00a0 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.\u00a0 (1 Corinthians 15:3-9.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n And we have modern testimony, as well.\u00a0 Here are Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, speaking of their spectacular vision of the three degrees of glory, received in the John\u00a0Johnson home in Hiram, Ohio, on 16 February 1832:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!\u00a0 For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father.\u00a0 (Doctrine and Covenants 76:22-23.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n My mother was not perfect.\u00a0 She could, for example, be very sharp.\u00a0 She was not always patient.\u00a0 And in her last years of almost constant pain, discomfort, frustration, and (I believe) depression, she was not always at her best.\u00a0 But these were not mortal sins, and surely, like the far more compromised woman who anointed Jesus\u2019 feet with oil and washed them with her hair, \u201cHer sins . . . are forgiven; for she loved much.\u201d\u00a0 (Luke 7:47.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A few hours after Mom\u2019s death on Monday afternoon, I had some quiet moments in her house to reflect.\u00a0 It was very emotional for me.\u00a0 The house is filled with hundreds of objects that had meaning for her, and that, through her, have meaning to me.\u00a0 Very few of them have much intrinsic value.\u00a0 Separated from the house and from the people (my parents) who gave them meaning\u2014as many of them soon will be, in a yard sale or something of the sort\u2014they are mostly just a clutter of knickknacks.\u00a0 I will inherit a few of them, but what I really want is my mother, and they are at best a fading shadow of her.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n It is much the same with respect to her body.\u00a0 Without her personality animating it and giving it meaning, it has little value.\u00a0 We honor her by being here with her casket at her funeral, but she isn\u2019t in it.\u00a0 Someday, however, she will take her body up again\u2014for eternity.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Many years ago, in my early to mid-teens, I was sitting in a car out in the parking lot behind the old Rosemead Ward chapel at the corner of Mission and Walnut Grove.\u00a0 It was a bright Sunday afternoon following church meetings, and I was wondering\u2014worrying, really\u2014about whether there actually was life after death.\u00a0 Suddenly the thought struck me, very clearly and very much as if from outside myself, \u201cMillions and millions of people have died, and it hasn\u2019t hurt\u00a0them.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 I remember thinking immediately how very stupid that thought was, that it didn\u2019t really answer my question.\u00a0 But as I pondered it later, it occurred to me that perhaps it actually did, and profoundly.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In my mother\u2019s case, death has not hurt her.\u00a0 It has liberated her.\u00a0 For years, profoundly deaf, she has lived a life of increasing silence and isolation.\u00a0 As I walked through the house on Monday afternoon, I looked at the hospital bed that, set up near the kitchen table, represented almost her entire world\u2014apart from unwelcome excursions for dialysis and other medical procedures\u2014for the past three years or so.\u00a0 I went upstairs, and realized that she had not been there, so far as I know, for roughly that same length of time.\u00a0 Not even upstairs in her own home.\u00a0 Death has liberated her.\u00a0 She can move, more freely than ever she did here in mortality.\u00a0 She can see clearly.\u00a0 She can hear.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n More than that, she is now\u2014and the many hundreds of reports from those who have seen the spirit world all agree on this\u2014in an environment of indescribable beauty, where the flowers are far more colorful and beautiful even than the roses she loved so much here.\u00a0 I hope and believe that she was greeted by her mother, by her brother Jack, and by others she had loved and lost.\u00a0 Among them, of course, would be my Dad.\u00a0 Their last several years were almost unbearably difficult as they sat together, yet apart\u2014he blind, she deaf, both immobilized and incapacitated.\u00a0 Their frailty and disabilities are now behind them forever, \u201cand God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.\u201d\u00a0 (Revelation 7:17.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n For the past seven years, or thereabouts, since my father\u2019s stroke and the beginning of my mother\u2019s long decline, I have called home every single evening.\u00a0 Almost without fail, unless I was out of North America.\u00a0 And sometimes even then.\u00a0 That comes to roughly twenty-five hundred telephone calls.\u00a0 (I didn\u2019t know what else I could do.)\u00a0 For the last couple of years, because of Mom\u2019s deafness and the mini-strokes she had suffered, those calls stuck pretty strictly to a very limited script.\u00a0 But she would always say \u201cIt\u2019s enough just to hear your voice.\u201d\u00a0 Now, frankly, I\u2019m lost.\u00a0 Every evening, I\u2019ve wanted to call, but there\u2019s nobody left to call.\u00a0 It would be enough just to hear her voice.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n On Monday night, as I lay awake, unable to sleep, I found some of the words of an old Mormon hymn going through my mind.\u00a0 They speak of another Mother and Father, but, on Monday night, they seemed to apply very much to my own earthly parents, now gone:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In the heavens are parents single?<\/span><\/p>\n No; the thought makes reason stare!<\/span><\/p>\n Truth is reason, truth eternal<\/span><\/p>\n tells me I\u2019ve a mother there.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I leave this frail existence,<\/span><\/p>\n when I lay this mortal by,<\/span><\/p>\n Father, Mother, may I meet you<\/span><\/p>\n in your royal courts on high?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then, at length, when I\u2019ve completed<\/span><\/p>\n all you sent me forth to do,<\/span><\/p>\n With your mutual approbation<\/span><\/p>\n let me come and dwell with you.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n As the years go by more and more swiftly, I realize that it will not be all that long until, for me too,\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>the night is gone<\/span><\/p>\n And with the morn those angel faces smile,<\/span><\/p>\n Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In the meantime, I will miss Mom and Dad every day of my life.\u00a0 I will never stop loving them.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Posted from Bountiful, Utah<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 This is probably going to be an annual tradition for me. \u00a0Maybe it already is. \u00a0 I don\u2019t expect anybody else to read it or even be interested in it, but here, for Mother\u2019s Day, is the tribute that I wrote for and \u2014 despite the fact that I\u2019m an unemotional Scandinavian type 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