Kenneth Dee Walters<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 strictly speaking, my half-brother \u2014 my only sibling, to whom I was exceptionally close, had died.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was stunned and immobilized. \u00a0I still think of him, and I still miss him, every day. \u00a0Literally and without exaggeration, every day.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve made it my practice on this blog to post something about him (typically my hastily composed and inadequate remarks at his funeral in South Pasadena, California) for his birthday and for the anniversary of his passing. \u00a0Others may or, much more likely, may not care. \u00a0But, frankly, doing this for my brother, and for my parents, and for my granddaughter \u2014 in memory of them, and out of love for them, and out of continuing grief for them \u2014 is one of the reasons that I bother with a blog in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
On my brother\u2019s tombstone in the San Gabriel (California) Cemetery, the inscription reads \u201cA Life of Service \/ Matthew 25:40.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a simple but fitting tribute.\u00a0 Last year at about this time, one of my sons and I were reminiscing about my brother, and my son said something very insightful:\u00a0 As he thought about the various things that he had done with his uncle, he realized that, in every case, Kenneth was doing something for him\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 taking him to a jazz club\u00a0 in west Los Angeles (my brother wasn\u2019t especially fond of jazz), taking him to Tower Records out on Wilshire, taking us to an all-day blues festival in Long Beach because he thought my son would like it, sitting down and watching a movie with my son that he was sure my son would enjoy.\u00a0 And then, my son remarked, he began to see that just about all<\/em> of his memories of Kenneth involved Kenneth\u2019s doing something that someone else<\/em> would really like.\u00a0 Taking time, expending effort, to do things for others.\u00a0 I think those are excellent memories to have of him, and excellent memories for him to have left behind.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
How I miss him!<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, below, once again, is my funeral tribute, from March 2012:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been tinkering with a book project\u2014with\u00a0several<\/em>\u00a0book projects, actually\u2014for a number of years now.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I never told Kenneth this, but my plan was to dedicate the first of them to \u201cKenneth D. Walters, best of brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It sometimes occurred to me, knowing the health history of his biological father, that if I didn\u2019t hurry and get the book finished, I might someday be too late.\u00a0 But he seemed to be in pretty good health.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, though, I\u00a0am<\/em>\u00a0too late.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m so very, very sorry.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wanted to say it to him.\u00a0 I wanted him to know.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because he\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0the best of brothers to me.\u00a0 Generous, unfailingly supportive, probably my most enthusiastic fan.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The years likely stretching out before me seem, at the moment, bleak and desolate without his remarkable generosity and his never-failing enthusiasm for whatever I was doing.\u00a0 Sometimes, he would join me from California when I was lecturing in Missouri, North Carolina, or wherever, just to be supportive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several years ago, he attended a lecture of mine at BYU Education Week, in the Wilkinson Center Ballroom.\u00a0 The audience was very large, and a mass of people crowded around afterwards with questions and comments.\u00a0 But the next lecturer needed to set up, and we were encroaching on his time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDanny!\u201d Kenneth called out, addressing me as only he, my older brother, and my mother and a handful of derisive Internet critics ever have since roughly my fifth birthday.\u00a0 \u201cWe need to go!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u00a0dare<\/em>\u00a0to call him\u00a0\u2018Danny\u2019?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0responded an incredulous lady standing beside him, far more concerned about the speaker\u2019s status and dignity than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
He thought that was hilarious.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
How dearly I would love to hear him call me \u201cDanny\u201d\u2014or anything else\u2014right now.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I love him more than I\u2019m capable of writing or saying.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a pretty unemotional person, usually.\u00a0 But I wrote this with aching eyes, tears, and sobs.\u00a0 It will be a minor miracle if I can deliver it at all well.\u00a0 For your sake, as well as for mine, I\u2019ve prayed that I can.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was ten years older than I am, and, strictly speaking, not my full brother but a half-brother.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t even share the same last name.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we never, ever, thought of ourselves as half-brothers.\u00a0 To my father\u2019s eternal credit, he never made any distinction between us on that score, and neither did we.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of my earliest memories involve rough-housing with my older brother.\u00a0 Once, he lost track of how much younger and smaller I was, and I got hurt just a bit.\u00a0 He was almost inconsolable.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was playful.\u00a0 One night, he was babysitting me and decided to watch the original movie of\u00a0King Kong<\/em>.\u00a0 It terrified me, but he held my hands so that I couldn\u2019t cover my eyes and I was apparently too stupid to just close them.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I went, sometimes, to see him play Church softball.\u00a0 He was my hero, and he could hit the long ball.\u00a0 I thought of him as my own Frank Howard, a home-run hitting outfielder who was playing with the Dodgers at the time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another time, when he was a student at BYU and I was still roughly junior high school age, he sent me a box from Provo.\u00a0 I was excited to discover what it was, and reached my hand into the packing material to extract my prize.\u00a0 What I touched, though, felt very strange and worrisome.\u00a0 He had sent me a small sand shark for dissection, reeking of formaldehyde.\u00a0 It was, I think, part joke and part serious effort to give his little brother a really interesting experience.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kenneth was as practically competent as I am a dreamer and impractical<\/em>.\u00a0 We\u2019re very different in many respects.\u00a0 So I was surprised when he told me, once, that his favorite college class had been a course on Chaucer\u2019s\u00a0Canterbury Tales<\/em>.\u00a0 For years, he\u2019s been a faithful attendee at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, often displeased when there was, in his view, too much modern stuff and too little Shakespeare.\u00a0 And, over the years, he became, thanks to Sandra\u2019s passion for it, interested in the Shakespearean authorship question\u2014inclining toward Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford. \u00a0(He even adopted De Vere\u2019s coat of arms as the symbol of the family construction business.) \u00a0My wife and I even got the chance, once, to attend a seminar on that issue with them in Portland.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
My father didn\u2019t join the Church until 1972, so it was Kenneth who ordained me to the Melchizedek Priesthood, and he and Sandra, along with John and Diane Ziebarth, took me to the temple for the first time.\u00a0 In fact, we made a little temple tour of Utah right afterwards, in a time when there were only four temples in the whole state.\u00a0 When I was ordained a bishop a few years ago, Kenneth flew up to Utah, without telling me that he was coming, to be there for my announcement to the congregation and for my ordination.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The day Kenneth died, I was lost.\u00a0 I was supposed to speak in an academic conference that afternoon, but I bowed out.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t have done it.\u00a0 The paper held no interest for me at all.\u00a0 Instead, Debbie and I went to the temple.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
There, I saw lots and lots of older, white-haired people, both among the temple workers and the temple patrons.\u00a0 Not a surprise, of course.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help, though, but feel some resentment at the injustice of it all:\u00a0 My brother didn\u2019t even get to reach seventy.\u00a0 I had looked forward to at least five or ten more years of shared trips and lengthy phone calls.\u00a0 I know that time heals, but, honestly\u2014even though we only got together a few times each year and only spoke every few weeks\u2014the time I have left, if it\u2019s as long as the actuarial tables predict, seems right now to stretch before me like something of an infinite and barren wasteland.\u00a0 I already miss him terribly.\u00a0 We had plans.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet, and yet . . .\u00a0 He died in a manner that most would envy, when it comes down to that.\u00a0 As Lord Tennyson\u2019s poem puts it, \u201cGod\u2019s finger touched him, and he slept.\u201d\u00a0 No long debilitating illness, no loss of faculties.\u00a0 Its suddenness makes his passing all the more painful to us, but there was mercy in it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Why did he have to go so soon, when he was still so vigorous?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 As Nephi expressed it, \u201cI know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a really, really serious political conservative, and I owe a great deal of the credit (or blame) for that to my brother.\u00a0 He may have been the person who introduced me to William F. Buckley, and to Buckley\u2019s\u00a0National Review<\/em>\u00a0magazine, to which I\u2019ve subscribed with very few interruptions (when I was out of the country) since I was about fourteen.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I like to brag, somewhat mysteriously, to some of my conservative friends that I voted for Barry Goldwater back in 1964, when I was eleven.\u00a0 And I really did.\u00a0 Kenneth took me into the polling booth with him, and allowed me to pull the lever for Senator Goldwater.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
For years, we\u2019ve traveled together.\u00a0 On both American coasts, in South America, Europe, even to Tombstone Days in Arizona.\u00a0\u00a0 (Kenneth loved Tombstone Days.\u00a0 He had even bought himself a \u201cduster,\u201d the kind of long, loose coat that cowboys used to wear.\u00a0 I suppose that hearkened back to a time before I was even born, when he was very small and, my mother once told me, they had to hurry back from any trip they were on so that Kenneth could get into his black \u201cHopalong Cassidy\u201d outfit, strap on his two white-handled toy revolvers, and plant himself in front of the television to watch Hopalong battle the bad guys.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was still in high school, Kenneth and Sandra took me on a trip up to Alberta, over to British Columbia, and down the Pacific coast of the United States.\u00a0 I fell in love with places (like the Olympic Peninsula in Washington) that are still among my favorites to this day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After some years where we had both been too busy with our own families and obligations, we had begun to travel together again, and I looked forward very much to these trips.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After years of trying and after several attempts that fell through at almost the last minute, I got to introduce him to my beloved Alps.\u00a0 And then, because he loved that trip so much, we got to go with him a second time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, at the end of our last trip to the Alps, he helped me to wrestle with and defeat a would-be pickpocket on the Milan Metro.\u00a0 I have a finger on my right hand that remains slightly but permanently bent from that encounter.\u00a0 Every time I look at it, I think of my brother.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My son Stephen has tastes in music that are far different from my brother\u2019s love for Elvis and the Oak Ridge Boys.\u00a0 But Kenneth once volunteered to host him in California.\u00a0 He picked Stephen up, took him dinner, then took him out to The Jazz Bakery in West Los Angeles.\u00a0 They spent what was for Kenneth, I\u2019m sure, a very long Friday evening listening to multiple sets of music that must have been excruciating to my brother.\u00a0 Stephen was ecstatic, though.\u00a0 Kenneth even secretly taped the performance, because he knew that Stephen would enjoy it so much.\u00a0 And, the next morning, when he was taking Stephen to the airport, my brother took him to Tower Records, where he could buy music that he couldn\u2019t, in those days, get in Utah.\u00a0 Kenneth did this out of love for me and my family.\u00a0 I wish I had returned that love more openly and plainly.\u00a0 To say it now, with mere words, is scarcely adequate.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
On another occasion, he and Sandra took us to an all-day Saturday blues festival in Long Beach.\u00a0 When I was very young, he took me and my friends to a Rolling Stones concert.\u00a0 It was mostly teenage girls screaming; we could scarcely hear the band, and I can\u2019t imagine that he enjoyed it much.\u00a0 But he took us, because that\u2019s the kind of brother he was.\u00a0 It\u2019s the kind of husband he was, too.\u00a0 He laughed for years about being the only white guy in a huge audience\u2014at, I think, the Long Beach Sports Arena\u2014when he took his rhythm-and-blues loving blonde wife to a James Brown concert<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t believe he\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking of Elvis:\u00a0 Several years ago, when Stephen and I were driving with my eldest son out to his Navy posting in Charleston, South Carolina, we stopped off by Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee.\u00a0 For some reason, I\u2019m absolutely impervious to Elvis.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t resist calling Kenneth from Lonely Street, just in front of Heartbreak Hotel\u2014a place that, I joked, surely had to rank in his mind as one of the most sacred places on the planet.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kenneth was a gun enthusiast.\u00a0 He bought me an assault rifle.\u00a0 When he asked me how big a clip I wanted, I told him that I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 How many people are there, I asked, at the average post office or McDonald\u2019s?\u00a0 I confess that I\u2019ve only fired it once, when he came up and took me out to shoot it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
His generosity was stunning.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It took me a while to finish my dissertation, since I\u2019d come up to teach at BYU and had very little time to work on it and nobody within six hundred miles who knew anything about my very obscure topic.\u00a0 He kept telling me that I needed to hurry, because he had a gift for me.\u00a0 And he did.\u00a0 It was a burgundy-colored 1971 Porsche 911 \u201cTarga\u201d that he had bought from a plastic surgeon friend of his.\u00a0 I had once commented that I loved Porsches, and he had never forgotten.\u00a0 So, when I finished my doctorate, I drove it up to Utah from California.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We were going to spend time with him up at the home he\u2019s been building in Sandpoint, Idaho.\u00a0 But that won\u2019t happen now.\u00a0 We were booked on a cruise with him around the British Isles in June.\u00a0 But that won\u2019t happen now.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was delighted at those opportunities because, as I\u2019ve said, I knew the history of his biological father, and worried that such chances would come to a premature end.\u00a0 Now they have.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This has been harder for me than the passing of my parents.\u00a0 They were old.\u00a0 They had suffered.\u00a0 They were ready to go, and it was time.\u00a0 Kenneth\u2019s passing came much too soon for me and for others.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I share with you, mostly as comfort for me, a true story that my friend and former neighbor Ken McCarty shared with me. Ken has been an associate at Brigham Young University and in church callings, and I write this with permission from him and his wife, Debbie.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their daughter Sarah died in 1997, after a lengthy and difficult struggle with cystic fibrosis. She was just thirteen. She had, though, lived an extraordinarily full life in that short time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1993, when she was roughly nine, Ken and Debbie took her on a cruise along the Volga River in Russia. Just before they left, Sarah\u2019s friend Kerie Waters came to visit and to bring Sarah several balloons.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kerie, 32, wore a headband to conceal the aftereffects of chemotherapy. She had been diagnosed only a few months before with terminal melanoma, a skin cancer, and their fatal illnesses had forged a special bond between her and the McCartys\u2019 daughter. It was, as Debbie and Ken recalled, a tender goodbye.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
One night, about two weeks into the trip, Sarah burst into her parents\u2019 cabin, sobbing uncontrollably.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI held her little shaking body,\u201d Ken remembers, \u201cand asked her what was the matter. When she finally caught her breath, she said, \u2018Dad, Kerie has died.'\u201d Ken was shocked \u2014 they had had little if any contact with home in those essentially pre-Internet days \u2014 and asked Sarah what had happened.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was kneeling by my bed, saying my prayers,\u201d Sarah replied. \u201cSuddenly I felt someone standing behind me. Then I realized it was Kerie. Kerie was in my room.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did Kerie say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarah responded that Kerie hadn\u2019t talked out loud, explaining that, in her heart, she could hear Kerie say that she had come to tell Sarah not to be afraid to die, that dying wasn\u2019t scary, it was beautiful.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKerie didn\u2019t want me to worry about her; she wanted me to know that she was very happy in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shortly after returning home, says Ken, he called Kerie\u2019s father, Wes Waters, and found out that Kerie had indeed died \u2014 around thirty minutes before Sarah\u2019s experience in Russia.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not the end of this story.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the April morning when Sarah herself passed away, her parents decided to wait until around 8:30 a.m. before they began the mournful task of calling to notify family and friends. But at approximately 8 AM, their telephone rang. The caller was a family friend named Don Wood, a BYU employee who also had cystic fibrosis.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In fact, at 42 years of age, he was one of the oldest surviving victims of the disease in the United States. Ken and Debbie hadn\u2019t been in touch with Don for several years.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Don inquired how they were doing. Ken answered that he wasn\u2019t doing too well.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Sarah, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Don asked.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you know?\u201d Ken responded.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Don replied that he assumed she had passed away at roughly 6:30 that morning.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shocked, Ken confirmed that she had died at 6:17 AM. How, he wondered, had Don Wood heard the news?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lying in my bed struggling to breathe,\u201d Don said. \u201cI\u2019ve been on oxygen for some time now, and I wasn\u2019t sure if I would last through the night. At around 6:30 I felt a presence in my room, and, when I looked up, I saw Sarah standing in the air at the foot of my bed. I thought she was coming to take me to the other side, but I was surprised to see her because I didn\u2019t know she had passed away. She was all aglow, and it looked as if light was emanating from her, not just from around her; her entire being was glowing. Her hair was long and curled and she looked beautiful and mature. She didn\u2019t talk out loud, but she communicated with me in a clear voice in my mind. She simply said, \u2018I came to tell you, Don, don\u2019t be afraid to die. It\u2019s not scary. I came to tell you that heaven is beautiful.'\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarah looked happy and beautiful, Don said, and healthier than he had ever seen her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight months after Sarah died, Don Wood, too, passed away.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some people,\u201d Ken McCarty summarizes, \u201clife after death is a hope, something to have faith in. For me, because of our little Sarah, it\u2019s a fact. And, most important of all, it\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many scriptures come to mind now.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
1 Thessalonians 4:13, for example:\u00a0 \u201cBut I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And Doctrine and Covenants 42:45-46:\u00a0 \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.\u00a0 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<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s understandable that we grieve.\u00a0 Even knowing what he knew and what he was about to do, the Savior himself mourned at the death of his friend Lazarus: \u00a0\u201cJesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!\u201d\u00a0 (See John 11:35-36.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Critics of the Church, particularly of the secularizing kind who altogether reject theism, and lapsed members sometimes demand of me to know what difference belief in the Gospel makes.\u00a0 Some are focused on social-policy concerns or complaints about unfeeling church leaders or church finances or any number of things that seem to me entirely secondary or even tertiary and have never seemed more so than now.\u00a0 Right now, too, I just don\u2019t care\u2014not even slightly\u2014about those who seem to take delight in cynically mocking and deriding what I and many others hold sacred.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The difference the Gospel makes is utterly clear to me at times such as this.\u00a0 Without it, I would have no hope ever to see Kenneth again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been thinking about friends.\u00a0 I include my brother among them:\u00a0 He was a very good friend all of my life, since the time of my earliest memories, and, although I know that time will dull this wound as it has dulled all others, right now the thought of going through the rest of my life without his consistent love and support seems a very bleak and desolate one.\u00a0 Oddly, at my age, I feel truly orphaned.\u00a0 My parents and my only sibling are gone.\u00a0 I never knew my grandfathers and scarcely knew my grandmothers.\u00a0 Nobody remains now from that little house in San Gabriel, California, where my brother and I were raised, and, in fact, even the house itself was demolished a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime\u2014in this mean time\u2014my mind has gone back repeatedly to some hymn lyrics by Karen Lynn Davidson, as set to music by A. Laurence Lyon.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each life that touches ours for good<\/p>\n
Reflects thine own great mercy, Lord;<\/p>\n
Thou sendest blessings from above<\/p>\n
Thru words and deeds of those who love.<\/p>\n
What greater gift dost thou bestow,<\/p>\n
What greater goodness can we know<\/p>\n
Than Christlike friends, whose gentle ways<\/p>\n
Strengthen our faith, enrich our days.<\/p>\n
When such a friend from us departs,<\/p>\n
We hold forever in our hearts<\/p>\n
A sweet and hallowed memory,<\/p>\n
Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee.<\/p>\n
For worthy friends whose lives proclaim<\/p>\n
Devotion to the Savior\u2019s name,<\/p>\n
Who bless our days with peace and love,<\/p>\n
We praise thy goodness, Lord, above.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
All I can do under present circumstances, though, is hope.\u00a0 Not only for a future reunion with my brother, but with all those\u2014parents, aunts and uncles, friends, teachers, Scoutmasters, Church leaders, intellectual mentors\u2014who\u2019ve gone before.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I say, on Friday afternoon, incapacitated by grief, knowing nothing else to do, I went with my wife to the temple.\u00a0 I confess that I was distracted, hearing only parts of what was said.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a place in the temple that represents our reunion with loved ones beyond the veil, and, on Friday, entering that room, I suddenly struggled to control my emotions for a few seconds as the thought powerfully, distinctly, and rather unexpectedly entered my mind: \u201cKenneth did this for real\u2014not just symbolically\u2014a few hours ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Decades back, I read an article in a Church magazine about the Hill Cumorah Pageant.\u00a0 I remember nothing from it beyond one sentence:\u00a0 Referring to the sadness of parting from co-workers in the Pageant\u2019s cast and crew after intense days together, a volunteer remarked that the pain was less because \u201cfriends in the Gospel never meet for the last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
That sentiment has remained with me ever since.\u00a0 I believed it then, and I believe it even now.\u00a0 If actuarial statistics are correct, the wait will probably be far longer than I had wished and hoped, but I will see my brother again, hear his voice, and embrace him.\u00a0 He will, as always, have prepared for my arrival.\u00a0 If he can, he\u2019ll be there to greet me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection,\u201d testified the Prophet Joseph Smith, \u201cprovided you continue faithful.\u00a0 By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My brother, a long-time youth leader, high councilor, member of bishoprics, and bishop, was faithful.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s up to me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 I do it every year, so there should be no surprise that I\u2019m doing it again this year: \u00a0 Unbelievably, it was exactly ten years ago today that I received the completely unexpected and devastating news that my brother, Kenneth Dee Walters\u00a0\u2014 strictly speaking, my half-brother \u2014 my only sibling, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9233,25616,21922,5877],"class_list":["post-94622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kenneth","tag-kenneth-d-walters","tag-kenneth-dee-walters","tag-kenneth-walters"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Kenneth](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2020\/11\/KennethWalters.jpg\")
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