OUR DEAR MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER BETTE LEAVES US...

JUDI'S TRIBUTE TO HER MOTHER: JULY 1, 2010

  (To mom: 1980 )

   Those who know my mother well,

         Say they see her when I smile…

         That’s a joy to me as all can tell -for I remember as a child

         A smile that wiped my tears away, her rare and precious art

         Speaking wisdom as I sought my way and listening from the heart.

         In my life lives the gift she gave

   Will I give my smile like she?

   Can I love in her uncommon way?

         Will her gift abide in me?

We all know how impossible it is to even remotely give justice to the life of a woman such as Bette in a meeting such as this.  I pray that as I speak you will have your own personal sweet remembrances and that you will feel the spirit comfort you and me today.

 Many times over the last even 10 years, I marveled that I could put on a pair of running shoes, turn on some tunes and run home.  Literally home… To the house I was raised in, to the parents who had always loved me.  And every time I came in the door huffing and puffing, it was like some VIP or movie star had just entered. Always welcomed, always loved.  Everything would get dropped to talk and laugh with me.  There was never a time that it was lost on me. On how really sacred that was, and how lucky I was. I could run back to my childhood anytime I wanted..

 We were laughing about a funny memory the other day.  Bette wanted to remember how she got the title “Crazy Bette” from all my friends.  It happened like this: Slumber party, I’m 14 years old, and me and my 20 friends thought it would be evil and counter culture to sneak into the Cottonwood club and go swimming in our underwear at two in the morning…. But all of a sudden a spotlight was on us and we were ordered out of the pool by a young policeman.  He followed us home-soggy and dripping and embarrassed.  Bette met him at the front door with her yellow fuzzy robe, her pink fuzzy slippers and her hair wrapped in toilet paper for the next day.  She asked what we had done- he told her- she said: well, we’re members of the club- does that help?  The policeman said he was worried about someone drowning.  She said she’d be our lifeguard and shuffled out of the house in all her finery.  He just scratched his head and left us.. So there we are until 5 in the morning, Bette sitting in the life guard chair watching us, ( we all know Bette can’t swim….and when the sun came up- she shuffled us back to the house for waffles.   “Crazy Bette”- a term of endearment!

A few years after marrying Mike, we were setting out to climb Angel’s Landing in Zions.  Bette took off with her purse…I said “mom! Lose the purse”  she just laughed and kept walking. “mom! The purse!”  At the switch-backs about 15 of us sit down, exhausted and tired.  Out of the great “black hole” that is Bette’s purse come 15 Diet Coke’s, cold and wrapped in tin foil…

 Bette was my best friend.  Since I didn’t have sisters, she was my mother, my sister, my sounding board, my best friend.  I am a tremendously flawed person, but I could literally do no wrong in her eyes.  I could talk hours about something that I was trying to work out, repeat my self a thousand times to try to get my head around it, and she would hang on my every word.  Raising my little kids, nothing gave her greater joy than endless conversations about them….

I never had anything to rebel against.  She trusted me, gave me my freedom young and the thought of ever disappointing her was unthinkable.

I’ll never forget my first date with Mike.  We were both so excited.  Bette spent the entire morning making potato salad for our picnic.  When Mike came to pick me up and I showed him the potato salad “I had made”, he just laughed and said: “Don’t even bring it.  My grandma makes the best potato salad in the world”.  I think I saw smoke coming out of Bette’s ears as I drove off with Mike.  I got home that night at 1:30 a.m. and just went in to mom’s room and said “get up!”  We talked until 5:00 am about every detail of the date, and how I was in big trouble because I felt so strongly about this boy.  After the “potato salad incident”- Mike really wanted to get into Bette’s good graces.  He somehow gave her the MISTAKEN impression that he liked her fruit cake.  For the next 25 years, no matter where we were living in the country we’d get boatloads of Bette’s fruit cake, individually wrapped at Christmas.  I know that in heaven Mike will have to atone for his misdeeds by eating a whole lot of potato salad and fruit cake in her laughing presence…

 Physically, Bette  had 2 children, but was the mother of thousands. Students,.  Cambodians-  South High  Debra Cole represents hundreds, maybe thousands of students who had the trajectory of their lives forever changed by Bette’s ability to love and teach.

Always called them her adopted children and literally meant it.  Those relationships sustained her.

There are so many  she loved I know if I start mentioning them I will miss someone so I won’t try. 

But I must mention some….Dinner group.  A group that met in college and raised their children together.  Sky blue and  sky black they have stuck together.  Raising kids, living life in all it’s complexity, buoyed up by each other’s love and friendship that really surpasses friendship and has become family.

 The Welti sisters- You belong to Bette’- heart and soul. She loved you as daughters. Watched your lives in awe and joy, .  You have honored her her entire life by calling her your second mother.  She was that in every sense of the word.

Vern and Luanna Brazel, Fern Evans and many ward members that I may not even know- you have been angels of mercy, -blessings, meals, conversations and deep abiding friendships. May you know of our love and gratitude .

I remember her Dr. telling me that one of her many challenges was “an enlarged heart”.  I couldn’t think of a better diagnosis for my mom. Certainly she had an unusually large, constantly enlarging heart, filled with loving so many people.  She just took them in.. You all know that.  She couldn’t help herself.  Her capacity to love was immense.  So many of you here have been the recipient of her love and her time, her wisdom and her amazing spirit.

But there were 9 little children who lived there that took up most of the space.  As you all know, if you have talked to Bette about her grandchildren- if you have talked to Bette at all--  you are aware that each of her grandchildren- oddly enough- are undisputed geniuses!  If I would ever call my mom and tell her something good that happened to one of my kids she would calmly give me the knowing “I told you so”- Judi- I’ve always said he is a genius, when will you believe me.? and no offence to any of your grandchildren- but Bette’s grandchildren also APPARENTLYwere the most goodlooking, most talented, funny  and gifted children on earth. 

Even as the grandchildren grew up, left home, were gone on missions and life adventures- she worried, thought, talked about them at the expense of everything else.  On one of her difficult days I would go to see her and she would beg me to tell what each one of my children were doing, what funny thing they said… She would say: “Tell me again what Sophie said!  Tell me again about James’ latest painting….Read me again Emily’s letter and it was the only thing that could remove her from her personal pain.  Keeping track of 9 genius’s can be taxing ,and time consuming but it was, as you know… her greatest joy.

Seeing her new great grandchild was something that she told me she wanted to stay alive for.  I blew up a picture of sweet baby Haven and put it by where she sat.  She would smile at the picture and even talk to it and giggle as it just brought her so much joy…

To you nine- now ten impossibly good looking, flawless, genius grandchildren. .  Because you were children, you may not have clear memories of all your experiences with your grandmother.  You may not remember the hours that she would relish just sitting and reading to you in the big leather chair.    Having popsicles right after breakfast because you wanted them! ( My totally strict mother became a mass of mush!  She was a grandmother who saw no reason to ever say no to her grandchildren!) 

Michael: you may not remember Bette letting you harvest her tomatoes in your little wagon- even if they were green, and not getting mad at you for harvesting all the red ones and taking a bite out of each just to make sure they were good.

James- Bette took you very seriously when you just wanted to wear your duck hat for 7 months straight.  She laughed when I called her from Rochester sobbing because you had painstakingly and with great artistic flair colored in with red permanent marker all the white stripes on my tan and white striped couch. All she wanted to know was- was it artistic? Did he do a good job? He’s an artistic genius- let him work!

Emily: Your independent spirit was a match for your grandmother’s.  She liked nothing better than stories of you- starting at age 14 months when I would try to help you do anything and you would just say- no no mommy, Emmy do.  Once again, evidence that you were  in her mind-an undisputed genius and future leader of the free world. She is so proud of your tenacity to serve a mission . She made me read her every letter sometimes 3 times.. When she would swear like a sailor during an athletic game, you and Katie kept her honest with the swear jar. A quarter for every swear word.    I always kidded her that you guys would all go to college on the money you collected in the swear jar…

Katie- you were Bette’s baby for so long.  She loved to fix your hair and read to you and Emily.  You may never know how much she loved to watch you dance.  It reminded her of watching me dance and those years.   She once told me that she couldn’t tell the difference between us on stage anymore…  It also reminded her of a time in college where she was a dancer in some operas- those memories were especially sweet to her. She followed your love life tenaciously- and any boy that hurt you better watch his back…

Sophie: You were what Bette lived for when her health became such a hardship. She loved more than anything, your sleepovers- where you would just snuggle together all night and eat bacon in the morning while you watched cartoons together. She called you the light of her life. She called you the Russian Tornado- There was something about you leaping and bounding around her house with your ridiculous amount of joy and energy that just brought her into another world.  You gave her someone to fuss over, and baby and love when all the other grandkids were sort of too old.  She called you her “happy medicine” and that is exactly what you  were. There has never been a child more loved- instantly- by a grandmother.  I remember coming in from Russia with you- and at first sight the power of her love for you was indescribable.  You brought joy and light and laughter to her when things were dark and difficult. 

You kids may not remember specifics, but all the time and love lavished on you by this remarkable, strong woman, will always be a part of who you are.  The fact that you knew you had a safe haven in her love, that on your days when you felt less than adequate- there was this indomitable  force- in whose eyes you could do no wrong.  In whom your life’s purpose was anything you wanted to make it.  Such complete, deep and unconditional love was always there.   Always a soft place to fall, ever present—and I know that will continue.  I ask you to feel that love still.  Watching over you, a part of your own light.  See her as you go through your life- her ability to do hard things, to suffer and still be kind, to ache personally, but still reach out to others. Her way of collecting people to love!  Let that live on through you.  Make those sacred traits live on through you.

And of course my dad.  I have seen the face of true love and it is not standing next to a wedding cake.  It is in a hospital room- time after time.  It is a kiss   hello and goodbye as Bette sleeps that has more emotion and years of love than I can imagine.  It is the watchful care through the day and the night, the constant unselfish giving of himself to his beloved sweetheart. 60 years of all that life has to offer.  And even through sickness, a sense of humor and positive loving outlook that is rare.  Dad you are strong, courageous and the most loving man I know.  Your quiet dignity is something that everyone in this room , and all that love you and mom should strive their entire lives to emulate.

As our hearts are breaking, and our grief overcomes us at times, we must each in our inner lives contemplate our own place in the universe.  And we ask the churning questions: what is the purpose of this life.  Why am I here? Is there something after this.  Many of us in this room believe different things and I have respect for our differences.  But I’ll bet if you were to peak into our hearts we would all be closer than we think.  How ridiculous to think that this beautiful life, the sun and moon and stars and all the creation - in all it’s sublime order were a silly accident in time and space. 

That the thoughts and depths of the human heart, the love the wisdom, the passion, the joy- has no origin and no home. That the connections we make in this life, the tugging of our hearts that we feel at this moment- come from nothing.! and are extinguished when over as if it were a thing of naught.  No, I think if we were to check all our hearts, we would rage at the thought of blackness- nothingness, and extinction. For this life has proven so much more than that.  The depth of our grief is  also the depth of our love, of our reaching for  the divine. 

I personally bear testimony of the actual fact of life after death, of a plan higher than ourselves, of continuing relationships with those for whom our hearts yearn.  I bear testimony of the actual existence of God and of His son.  Not some essence, not some force or mist that I simply can’t relate to. I reject being generic and politically correct. I cannot love a life force, I can not plead with a mist, I cannot be comforted by an essence.  I have a Father. I know that I am the literal child of an actual father of my soul; in the actual  keeper of my heart.  A being of infinite love, an instigator of an eternal plan for each of us. 

Some think that is hard to believe but I say to you that the absence of believing  is the unthinkable, unspeakable ,the impossible. .  I am not a weak unsophisticated bumkin  needing  to be hypnotized, mesmerized, lulled into a false sense of security so that in my abject weakness as a mistake of the universe I can endure the difficulties and losses of life.  Yes, there are many mysteries and gray areas of life, but the eternal principals are in black and white.  God lives,  Jesus is the Christ, we have been bought with His love and Man is that he might have joy.  I do not love a book and reject the author any more than I would love the creation but not worship, love and acknowledge the creator.

 I reject struggling with tenses.  With the word “was”.  Because Bette is. I was with her in the last moments of her life.  It was the most sacred moment of my life. I felt her shed the constraints of her broken little body and move on!  She lives and laughs and loves and moves as I speak with peace and freedom and joy. As have we all, she has been bought with a price. With the atoning blood of the Savior Jesus Christ. And because of Him and Him alone, she moves on, lives eternally.

Death is not extinguishing the light!  It is putting out the lamp because, for Bette, the dawn has come.

The primary answers are always best as I was taught by Sophie.  My hand moves and my hand is like the human spirit., if I put a glove on it the glove is then moved by the hand…. (the glove representing the body)  but the glove is only the covering-it can be discarded and set aside, and the hand continues…. But it is the spirit that gives life to the body… The body is laid down, but the spirit continues forever..

  

In a beautiful blue lagoon on a clear day, a fine sailing ship spreads it’s brilliant white canvas in a fresh morning breeze and sails out to the open sea.  We watch her glide away magnificently through the deep blue and gradually see her grow smaller and smaller as she nears the horizon.  Finally, where the sea and sky meet, she slips silently from sight; and someone near me says, “There, she is gone…”

Gone where?  Gone from sight-that is all.  She is still as large in mast and hull and sail.  Still just as able to bear her load.  And we can be sure that, just as we say, “There, she is gone”, a multitude are saying, “There, she comes…”

Life is eternal, and love is immortal.  Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight…

Mom, your gentle guidance has immeasurably influenced all that I have done, all that I do, and all that I will ever do.

Your sweet, sassy  spirit is indelibly imprinted on all that I have been, all that I am, and all that I will ever be. 

Thus, you are a part of all that I accomplish and all that I become.

And so it is that when I help my neighbor, your helping hand is there also.  When I ease the pain of a friend, she owes a debt to you.  When I show a child a better way, you are the teacher once removed.

Because everything I do reflects values learned from you, any wrong that I right, any heart I may brighten any gift that I share or burden I may lighten, is in its own small way a tribute to you, mom.  Because you gave me life, and more importantly, lessons in how to live, you are the wellspring from which flows all  good I may achieve in my time on earth.

For all that you are and all that I am, thank you…Thank you for my life.  Be near me till we meet again.

SOPHIE'S DEBUT AS "VISUALLY IMPAIRED PIRATE IN THE LOCAL PRODUCTION OF 'PETER PAN!"