![\"Manti](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/08\/manti-utah-temple-night-1075642-gallery.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
Six years ago today, on 13 June 2014, our first grandchild was born in Orlando, Florida.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was born in a wing of a local Orlando hospital that had been built with generous Disney donations, and the hospital\u2019s public spaces were decorated everywhere with characters from Disney cartoons. \u00a0As it rapidly became obvious that Lena\u00a0would not, and could not, survive, I became acutely\u00a0aware of how much I had looked forward to one day introducing her to those characters via beloved\u00a0movies and in the nearby Disney theme parks. \u00a0I was surprised. \u00a0I grew up essentially an only child, with just a ten-year-older half brother; I haven\u2019t been around little kids a lot, and I\u2019m not especially good with them. \u00a0I hadn\u2019t even\u00a0realized that I was eagerly anticipating and imagining such a privilege.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
These days were, by a considerable distance, some of the worst of our lives. \u00a0If we could have spared our son and his wife this terrible grief, we would gladly have done so. \u00a0As it was, there was essentially nothing that we could do to help them or to take the burden from them, and that inability to help made the pain even deeper. \u00a0To watch our children in pain, to see them\u00a0go from joyful anticipation to stunning loss, was truly agonizing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But time passes, and wounds heal. \u00a0Not completely, but more or less.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lena\u2019s\u00a0stay with us was so very brief that I\u2019ve feared that I might forget her. \u00a0So, among other things,\u00a0I\u2019ve vowed to mark her birthday and the day of her death each year, until I no longer can, with blog entries about her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t allow her to have\u00a0passed\u00a0unnoticed. \u00a0Most of all, I myself\u00a0refuse to\u00a0forget her. \u00a0I am her grandfather. \u00a0I will miss her and I will mourn her until, someday, I meet her again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is the column, written literally and quite uncharacteristically through agonized sobs, that I published in the\u00a0Deseret News<\/em>\u00a0when she died:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some are displeased with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> over socio-political disputes, gender concerns and other perceived grievances. While I seldom if ever share their specific issues, I don\u2019t discount them. I know they can hurt.<\/span><\/p>\n However, compared with ultimate questions of life and death, they seem thin, even trivial. If the LDS Church\u2019s claims are true \u2014 which I believe \u2014 everything else is at most secondary.<\/span><\/p>\n I echo the apostle Peter\u2019s declaration, when some were offended by the Savior\u2019s teaching:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFrom that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God\u201d (see\u00a0John 6:66-69<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n On a wintry Utah night decades ago, President Harold B. Lee and a local church leader paused, gazing through snow and darkness toward the Manti Utah Temple, high on the hill above them. \u201cThat temple,\u201d the local man observed, \u201clighted as it is, is never more beautiful than in a storm or when there is a dense fog.\u201d President Lee made the application: \u201cNever is the gospel of Jesus Christ more important to you,\u201d he said, \u201cthan in a storm or when you are having great difficulty\u201d (see \u201cTeachings of the Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee\u201d<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n Mortality offers happiness and sweet satisfactions, but also deep disappointments, intimidating obstacles and \u2014 sometimes \u2014 almost unbearable sorrows that pierce like a knife.<\/span><\/p>\n Among the sharpest such sorrows is the loss of a child. When excited thoughts of baby clothes, crib, stroller, anticipated first books and a cheerfully waiting nursery are displaced by funeral preparations, those things remain \u2014 but now, they mock and wound. The world is suddenly desolate. Joy turns to ashes.<\/span><\/p>\n A passage from T. S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cJourney of the Magi\u201d comes to mind, however misapplied:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 Were we led all that way for<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n But had thought they were different; this birth was<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n But God be praised: The birth that the Magi came to honor was the birth that would end death. \u201cOne short sleep past,\u201d said John Donne, \u201cwe wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Naturally, we grieve. Even knowing what he knew and what he would soon do, the Savior himself mourned the death of his friend Lazarus: \u201cJesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!\u201d (see\u00a0John 11:35-36<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,\u201d wrote the apostle Paul, \u201cconcerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope\u201d (see\u00a01 Thessalonians 4:13<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die, and more especially for those that have not hope of a glorious resurrection. And it shall come to pass that those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 42:45-46<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n Surely death is sweet for tiny infants who scarcely draw breath in mortality. Surely they will enjoy a glorious resurrection. \u201cLittle children are alive in Christ,\u201d insisted the prophet Mormon, \u201ceven from the foundation of the world\u201d (see\u00a0Moroni 8:12<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n Decades ago, a simple sentence in an LDS Church magazine article<\/a> deeply impressed me. Sad at parting from co-workers after intense days together at the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a volunteer\u00a0remarked that the pain\u00a0was less acute because \u201cfriends in the gospel never meet for the last time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That comment has remained with me ever since. I believed it then; I believe it now. And yes, I desperately want it to be true.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAll your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection,\u201d\u00a0testified Joseph Smith<\/a>\u00a0in a passage that I\u2019ve needed to cite too often in these columns, \u201cprovided you continue faithful. By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>