By James E. Kerns

We’re here today to pay tribute to a special lady.  We thought it would be fitting and appropriate if the family could handle the service.

During the last two days each of us has had some very deep upwellings inside which have sometimes spilled over at the eyes as we’re reminded of something about Mom.  These feelings come from a great love, and from a sense that we’ve lost something irretrievable.  In these thoughts we’ve been guilty of selfishness, of some misdirected feelings, and in all cases guilty of poor perspective.

The last two evenings I’ve become very melancholy as things have quieted down from the busy activities of the day.  But each evening I’ve had neat experiences.  The evening before last as I sat in my living room I remembered a tape that Mom had made telling her life story.  Margie and I sat and listened to it.  It was great to hear Mom’s voice telling of her life’s experiences.

Last night as I sat down to reflect upon what I could say here, I recalled the deepest and blackest hour of my life, and how Mom came to my aid.  I was very reluctant to leave the nest.  When I left home I was desolate—very homesick.  I didn’t get over it quickly, either.  It took a long time.

Mom considered the problem.  I couldn’t come home.  That wasn’t the answer.  So she did the next best thing.  She took home to me.  She did it in the form of letters.  Volumes of them.  I saved them, but there got to be such a mountain of them, that finally it just wasn’t possible to keep them.

As I remembered this last night a panicky feeling came over me as I wondered whether I still had any of her letters.  I rummaged through the closets, and came up with a nice bundle of them.

Dad’s sister, Kate, always thought that Mom should have been a writer.  I subscribed to the same thought.  As she told about the weather and the seasons, her beautiful prose almost became poetry.  She told all the news about the home and family.  She was a great story teller.  I found this story in her letters last night, and thought it would be appropriate to read it here:

“But I’ll have to tell you this little story.  I was making our bed Friday evening.  Ellen had caught ‘Strell’ and was riding her up to the gate bareback, accompanied by the two dogs.  I thought I heard her calling, ‘Mom, Mom’ in a weak voice, so I went to the front door.  She came galloping up on her charger and informed me, in a very upset and urgent manner, practically screeching, ‘You’ve got to help me!  The dogs have a badger and I can’t get them away from it!’  I told her I’d be right up, so she wheeled her horse and galloped out.  I started for the Scout, and then I turned back and picked up my little rope.  I backed out of the shop, leaving the door open, and I roared off.  She and Estrellita were just a cloud of dust up the road.  How that girl can ride!  She had stopped and jumped off her horse, by the time I caught up with her.  Leaving ‘Strell’ tied to the wind (she went quietly to grazing by the side of the road) Ellen climbed over Dutch’s fence and took off at a run through the alfalfa.  I did likewise.  She grabbed a dog by the collar and called them by name; they didn’t pay too much attention.  I saw no badger, but I did put my rope through Ole’s collar and start leading him off, even as she led Jo away.  We loaded them in my Scout.  Ellen went back to look for the (little) badger.  Tim and Jan drove up the road in the big, brown pick-up; they were leaving for a bridge party and were leaving the kid with Ellen.  (They had rear-end trouble with the Pontiac.)  Tim asked me what the trouble was.  I told him the dogs were after a badger.  Ellen doesn’t like this matter-of-fact attitude.  She didn’t want the dogs to kill the little badger.  There was another one there, too, which didn’t figure in the fighting.  She thought the badger probably lived; it was lying there exhausted after the fight, but when she looked again, it was gone.  She was exhausted, too, and had to sit awhile until she felt strong enough to jump back on her pony.  I told her she could lead her from the Scout, but she declined.  She rested awhile after she got home, too.  I never knew for certain whether she was worrying more about the badger or the dogs.”  (June 18, 1969).

I thought that was a neat little story because it reminded me of the time that I ran pell-mell a half mile through the fields to summon Mom’s aid to rescue my own canine companion from a terrible badger fight.

Mom was very frugal.  Nothing went to waste.  Here is a typical letter from her (holding one up to be seen).  It’s neatly typed, and single-spaced.  The last page is cut off.  She couldn’t stand to see that white expanse of paper with nothing written on it.  So she’d simply cut it off and use it for something else.

Interspersed in her letters were her bits of philosophy.  I’ve lifted three excerpts from the letters I read last night.

“No man can bear the weight of the past, the present, and the future, all at one time.  Perhaps sometimes it is better to concentrate on the present, or the future.  I always kind of liked the advise the psychiatrist in the cartoon gave the patient, ‘Why don’t you snap out of this everyday life and live in a dream world of your own?’”

“Remember, obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”  How many times have we heard her say that?

“I feel that a deep and abiding faith in God and Jesus Christ is the best thing that can happen to anyone.  It gives a person strength.  You pray and believe in the best, even as I do, and I’ll bet we get it.”

I have two prized possessions.  They are two personal letters from Dad.  Mom was always the letter writer, but I did get two letters from Dad!  I ran across those last night, too.  Dad is a philosopher.  He always was, and he always will be.  I quote this bit of philosophy from his letter:

“I sometimes think God put man on this earth to see how he solved problems.  And the way one solved problems determined what use God made of one in the hereafter.  Some people let things throw them while others work them out and go on to something else.”

I quote this because I think this is what Mom did.

Up until a couple of years ago she thought nothing of climbing the apple tree to pick the apples.  She thought nothing of scaling a ladder to fix something on the roof.  She took daily long walks with her dogs.

But recently her hip gave out.  She could no longer do the things she’d always done.  She had a problem, and she faced it.  She had to have an operation.  And because she had the operation, she’s now “gone on to something else.”

What is this thing called death?  Where is Mom now?  What is she doing?  Will we ever see her again?  What is death like?

If I was to hold up a glove before you, it would be a lifeless, inanimate thing—just like a body.  But if I inserted my hand in that glove, then the fingers could wiggle and the hand could do work.  You’d say the glove was alive.  The same thing takes place in the process of birth when the spirit enters the body.  When I remove my hand from the glove, the glove again becomes lifeless, but my hand doesn’t.  This is what occurs at death.  The spirit leaves the body.  The body becomes lifeless.  But the real you, or the real me, or the real Mom goes right on living.  It’s the spirit that has personality, that talks and has senses, that looks out through the eyes and that thinks.  Mom at this moment is living, and conversing and sensing.

Someone compared a dying person to a ship.  I like this:

“I am standing upon the seashore.  A ship at my side spreads her sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.  Then someone at my side says, ‘There, she is gone.’

“Gone where?  Gone from my sight, that is all.  She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and is just as able to bear her load of living weight to the place of destination.  Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘There, she is gone,’ there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout saying, ‘Here she comes.’  And such is dying.”

I like to think about this.  We hate to see her go.  But others are rejoicing at her coming—something they’ve anxiously awaited.  She’s with her father, who she loved so much.  And with her mother.  She’s with her grandmother, Ellen, about whom she always spoke so highly.  And with her grandfather, Herbert, for whom she always had such deep respect.  She’s with her other grandparents that she never knew in life.  Then there’s Thomas Condon, her great grandfather, for whom she had a deep reverence.  And many, many others.

As much as she loved life and her family here, she in no way would want to return to this humdrum life of mortality.  She is surrounded by such wonderful sights and beautiful experiences that she can’t wait to share them with us.  She has just experienced life’s most beautiful experience.  They say that death is but an event in life.  When we have a neat experience our first thought is to share it with those we love.  That’s what she wants to do:  to have us come there so that we can share with her the exciting things she’s learning and feeling.

As far as I can determine Mom has but two concerns.  Her first concern is that already she very much wants her body back.  The scriptures tell us that we will look upon the long absence of our spirits from our bodies to be a bondage.  I don’t know all the reasons why this is so, but I do know that the time will come when each of us will get our bodies back again.  This is the great free gift worked out by our Savior.  He it was who had power to lay down his life and take it again.  Because He did, each of us will.  This is the Resurrection.  It will come to all men.  Our spirit and body will be reunited never to be separated again.

Mom’s other concern is her family.  Her passing does not release her from her position as mother.  Her passing does not change her interest in her children and grandchildren except to make her feelings and interest deeper.  She will be anxiously awaiting each of our arrivals in the Spirit World just as parents and loved ones awaited her .  You see, family is an eternal thing.  Family and learning to love and serve one’s fellow man is what life is all about.

They say you can’t take it with you.  This is said in reference to material things.  But there are some things you can take with you.  You take your personality and character.  Though you don’t take it with you, you will get your body back again.  And you can take your family.  Families are intended to be forever.  I guarantee the things I’ve told you are true.  I’ve studied many hours to know these things for myself.

I am grateful to my Father in heaven for the wonderful family I’m privileged to be a part of.  Mom’s father was once speaking of his grandchildren with pride, and he said emphatically, “And there’s not a dumb one in the lot!”

Mom could say that about her descendants:  “There’s not a dumb one in the lot.”  Neither is there a renegade.  There’s not a black sheep in the bunch.  They’re just fine, upstanding people.

I want to express my love for these people, this family—each and every one of them.

And I want to express my gratitude to my Father in heaven for my neat mother.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.