My Top 5 List of Things To Be Grateful For

Every year at this time I think about why I love Thanksgiving more than any other holiday in the calendar. It's always been a chance to sit down and take stock of the year as it quickly passes away. This year is no exception. We have so much to be grateful for, and I can always think of more than my top five because it's a very long list. But for 2014, here are my top five:

Ashley, Dianne, Patsy, Peggy

1. My mother-in-law, Peggy Ruth Brazier Hewlett Weight. Yes, at the top of my list this year I have ranked my mother-in-law. She recently passed away after almost 93 years on the planet. But I am not grateful she passed away. Rather, I am grateful for the long legacy of faith she represents to me and all her posterity. I am grateful for all the happy memories she has given us. I am grateful to her for living in such a way that we all learned valuable life lessons of repentance, forgiveness, diligence, hard work and dedication. Legion are the examples of people, family and otherwise, who were welcomed to her home when they were in town for visits. She was always the "hostess with the mostess."

By the world's standards, this would seem an odd choice at the top of a list of things for which I am grateful, but in my case none of the standard mother-in-law jokes apply. Peggy was world-class in essentially all the things that matter most in mothers and human beings in general. She was a consummate networker and connector of people. She had so many friends, even after such a long life, that the chapel for her funeral was filled to overflowing and back into the cultural hall. Never underestimate the impact of being a good friend. Indeed, nearly all her posterity and everyone who knew her thought they were her favorite. What capacity for making people feel special and valued!

I first became aware of Peggy when her son Lin was killed by a drunk driver when I was a junior at East High School. Lin was a senior and Patsy was a sophomore. I watched their family grieve over Lin's death, along with the whole student body. I was at the cemetery in October, 1963, when Lin and his friend Flemming Christensen were laid to rest fifty-one years ago. As I stood over the open grave the other day to dedicate Peggy's final resting place, the memory of Lin's and Flemming's funerals came rushing back. Now the circle of life was complete, and the glorious reunion that was taking place on the other side of the veil was revealed clearly to me and all the rest of us.

Peggy and Harold were role models of applying the atonement's principles to their lives, and they became diligent missionaries wherever in the world they went. Eventually, they would travel to the far corners of the earth, touching foot on every continent except Antarctica. Her son John sang "O That I Were an Angel," as a final tribute to her at her funeral, and when I thought of Lin and Flemming doing missionary work in the spirit world for fifty-one years before she joined them there, I was thrilled at the prospect of her wish finally coming true! How grateful I am for the knowledge of the plan of salvation that has been revealed in these last days.

2. I am grateful for her daughter, Patsy. I don't think there is a more compassionate and loving woman on earth than Patsy. She has spent the last several weeks at her mother's side both in the rehab center and the hospital. Peggy fell and broke her hip about seven weeks ago. It proved to be a game changer, and accelerated her demise. Until that event, we had all thought Peggy to be invincible. At the peril of her own health, something I have been worried about, Patsy pressed on in service to her mother, ignoring her own well-being. I insisted that she go to see the doctor this week after all the events of her mother's passing were complete, and as I was writing this post they called from the doctor's office to give an alarming report about Patsy's anemic condition, something that has been a lifelong challenge for her but has been exacerbated by the events of the past several weeks. We spent the rest of the day in the emergency room until well into the night, while they transfused her with two units of blood.

We never know when or how life will end. There are no guarantees, no extended lease terms on life. Our sojourn here on earth has an expiration date, we just don't have that information. I am grateful for each day I have with this remarkable woman, knowing factors beyond our control may overtake us someday. When I think about why Patsy has a lifelong pattern of little or no sleep at night and seems to be so focused on the needs and comforts of others ahead of her own, I need look no further than the example she saw in her mother for the answer.

At Merilee's wedding reception, summer 2014 

3. I am grateful for all our children and grandchildren. In our family we don't make distinctions about in-laws. They are all ours, and we count them that way. When we were counting up grandchildren of Peggy's we included all the spouses of our children in the count, and we were instructed that's not an accurate count. Peggy never believed that - she always sided with our way of counting. So, when the program for the memorial service was being prepared I listed everyone as though they all belonged to Peggy and Harold, because they do without reservation. One well wisher in a card to Patsy after the funeral, summed it up best:

"Your dear mother was loved by so many! She brought a lot of happiness and joy, especially to her grandchildren. They have expressed so many great things about their experiences with her. Her family was so important to her, her friends loved her, and she always was full of life!
"You were so fortunate to have had her in your life for so many years. Her zest for life, her love of family was so evident.
"Patsy, know I love you, you have so many wonderful traits of your mother."

4. The knowledge I have of the atonement of Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation. That testimony anchors our existence here in mortality. He suffered for each of us. As the only Sinless One, He took upon Himself our sins and our afflictions. There is nothing in this mortal experience He does not know and understand intimately. In a way I do not fully understand, He knew us in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. He knew about all the sins we committed, and He knew about all the wrongs that were inflicted upon us by others, and He forgave everyone who has ever afflicted another and been afflicted. I am thankful I share that knowledge with Peggy.

On the back of the program for her memorial service, we printed a written testimony she offered when she and Harold were serving as missionaries in Ireland. We found it among her papers as we were preparing for her funeral:

"Today is Mother's Day in the United States, and I am missing my beautiful children and grandchildren.
"My heart is overflowing with gratitude to my Heavenly Father for these beautiful children and grandchildren.
"The privilege of partnership with God in bearing and nurturing His children has been the greatest blessing of my life!
"I thank my Father in Heaven for noble heritage, ancestors who pulled handcarts across wonderful country, parents and brothers who love me and taught me to love the Lord, wonderful friends and associates.
"I am so grateful for a fine and noble husband to love me and care for me.
"I am grateful for gospel callings and teachings, for the Holy Spirit to lead, to warn, to strengthen and to comfort me.
"I believe in Christ. I love him with all my heart. I know His power."

5. I am thankful for a blanket of white that now covers Pine Valley. Last night ten inches of snow fell and all the trees are now cloaked in white that sparkles with a brightness beyond description. I said to Patsy as we drove down the road to our three-hour block of meetings this morning, "This is the most beautiful scene imaginable. The winter presents some challenges to overcome, but if you love white this is the place to be." Whenever the Utah ski resorts get a big winter storm before Thanksgiving, it bodes well for the tourist trade in these parts and the water reserves for next summer. We can be thankful for water content in snow.

White is such a remarkable and consistent gospel symbol. We dress in white clothing to go to the temple to participate in all the ordinances of salvation. We are all dressed alike. There is no class distinction there. When Peggy was lying in her casket at her viewings, her white temple dress was the one she selected and told Patsy, "This is the dress I want you to bury me in." In life she was beautiful and arrayed in spotless white when she attended the temple with us, and in death she was translucent, appearing to be at peace in her restful repose and twenty years younger than her 92-plus years.

Babies are blessed in white. Brides are dressed in white. A white shirt is the "priesthood uniform" for boys and men alike. White is the color for all participants in a baptismal service. Often, though not mandated, white bread is the symbol for the sacrament. We wash our garments in the blood of Christ through His atonement, and when we do we are told we are made "spotless white."

And now in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, alongside her beloved Lin, the graves are covered in a fresh blanket of white.

Grandma Patsy's Easter Letter

April 2011

My darling children and grandchildren,

Happy Easter! This is a glorious time of year. It is one of my favorite times of the year. April is the month that our Savior, Jesus Christ was really born. It is also the month when the Church of Jesus Christ was organized. It is General Conference month when we can listen to our prophets and learn what the Lord wants us to know and do. It is also the month (usually) that we celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I decided as an Easter remembrance this year I would like to tell you about my testimony of and my gratitude for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and why it means so much to me.

As a child and for as long as I can remember I have loved my Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ. I loved to hear about them and I loved to sing songs about them. I loved to pray to my Heavenly Father and I knew He would answer my prayers. I always wanted to feel close to Heavenly Father and Jesus and do the things that they wanted me to do. Those are the things that made me happy.

As I grew, my testimony of the principles of the gospel also grew and developed. I knew my Savior loved me. I knew He experienced all kinds of trials and ridicule. I knew He suffered in Gethsemane and on the cross for me and for all mankind. I knew on the third day, after he died, that He was resurrected. I knew that meant we could all live after we die.

But when I really KNEW the great blessing and reality of the resurrection was when I was fifteen years old and a sophomore at East High School.

Lin Hewlett, 1963

Life as a fifteen-year-old was good. I had a great family and some wonderful friends. It was easier to be a “lowly sophomore” because I had an older brother who also went to East High. Lin was seventeen and had lots of friends and lots of talents and abilities. He was a senior. He played basketball, baseball, and sang in the A’Cappella and Madrigals. He was a “big man on campus.” He was a good brother to me. He acknowledged that I was his sister and his friends all said hello to me even though I was just a tenth grader. I was quite shy and so all of those people made being at a new school with over 2500 students easier for me. My best friends, Karen Burton and Becky Young, were the oldest in their families. Thus they had to “make it on their own," unlike those of us who had older siblings.

Hewlett Children, 1963

School started in September, so by October I was feeling fairly secure. All was good in my world. Then on October 21, 1963, my world was forever changed. My mother was President of the East High PTA. She and my father had a meeting at school that night.

Lin was off playing basketball at a stake center out south with his best friend, Flemming Christensen, and Gary Barrus. I was home tending John and Ernie. After Mother and Daddy returned home we were talking about what teachers had to say, etc., and the phone rang. They answered and quickly hung up. Evidently Lin had been in an accident and they had to go to the hospital. They quickly left.

Soon after, the door bell rang. At the door was Uncle Budge. Aunt Marlene and Uncle Budge lived above us on 16th Avenue. He asked for Mom and Dad and I told him they were at the hospital. He responded he knew that and when we asked what had happened he said, “I guess there was an accident and your brother was killed.”

A drunk driver had crossed four lanes of highway on Wasatch Blvd. and had hit Lin’s car head-on. Lin and Flemming were both killed instantly. Gary was injured, but soon recovered. What a shock! How shattered we all were. Lin was gone. . . never to return home. I was devastated! I was hysterical! I was in a fog! How would we ever go on without Lin?!

I remember lots of calls, lots of visitors, lots of food, lots of flowers, lots of love, lots of notes. I remember lots of news articles and lots of tears. Mother and Daddy were amazing. They seemed to comfort all who came. We had the viewing and the funeral. Many commented that Lin and Flemming had gone on their missions early.

Some said the Lord had a great work for them to do. I can’t remember all of the details, but what I do remember is that after I had had a priesthood blessing and I had prayed that a sweet peace enveloped me. I knew through the power of the Holy Ghost I would see my brother again; Christ our Savior was resurrected and because of Him and His sacrifices for us we would be able to live on after we died.

That knowledge didn’t take the pain and the emptiness away, but it did give me the courage to keep living and to try even harder than I ever had to live so I could be with Lin again. I remember lots and lots of days and nights walking to the cemetery and sitting by his grave. I remember crying and missing him. I remember talking to him and to the Lord. It was not an easy time, but I knew without any question the resurrection was real and because of Christ we would all live again.

How thankful I was for that knowledge and how thankful I still am!

Adrienne Goates, 1992

Years have passed and we have lost others we love. It is never easy to let them go. How we still miss all of them, but I know without any doubt we shall see them all again. I know if I keep my covenants that through the atonement and through the power of the priesthood we shall be a family forever! I know God lives and loves us. I know Jesus is the Christ and through Him we shall be saved if we repent and do all we can do. I am so thankful for my Savior. Because of Him and through our covenants in the holy temple we can be sealed together forever!

I love you all more than you will ever know. I pray constantly for each of you! May you all more fully appreciate the gifts our Savior and our Heavenly Father have given all of us this Easter is my prayer.

Love,
Mom (Grandma Patsy)

(My reflections on the events of the fall of 1963 are recorded here. A month later, following Lin and Flemming's deaths, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas).

The Death of Innocence

Dealey Plaza

Dallas, Texas

Only those over the age of fifty will qualify for this post.  The question of the day is, "Where were you when Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas?"  Today is the 46th anniversary of that event, but its effects live on.

I was attending East High School.  It was my friend Doug's birthday.  The school was still reeling from its mourning of the deaths of two classmates, having just buried two seniors who were killed by a drunk driver earlier that month.  Lin Hewlett and Flemming Christensen's lives were senselessly ended only a month before on October 21st.  They were hardly in their graves before the tragic news of President Kennedy stunned the world, another promising life snuffed out inexplicably. 

For students at East High in 1963, it was another staggering body blow.

On November 22, 1963, a small group of us were huddled in the cafeteria of the school, passing around homemade cupcakes with candles, and the news reached our table.  Despite our celebratory mood, there was instantaneous soberness, shock and disbelief.  Someone had shot and killed the President of the United States?  Unthinkable!  Not in 1963!  Those kinds of acts were reserved for some dark chapter in history, like back in the day when Lincoln was shot and killed at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.  But not now!

If no one knew Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather before that day, they certainly knew them thereafter.  I will never forget watching and re-watching Cronkite's report on black-and-white CBS TV News, choked with emotion as he removed his black horn-rimmed glasses and wiped away his tears as he made the somber pronouncement, "The President is dead."  It was unthinkable.  It was the era of the Beatles and Beach Boys when the decade began, but the Sixties would descend into a living hell of war protesting, racial upheaval and widespread psychadelic drug abuse.

The world mourned his passing for days, even years afterward.  Some spoke of it as the "end of Camelot."  There is never a year that passes but what articles are written (here's one that appeared today), specials are put together for TV, and we collectively recall that fateful day.  We never got to hear Lee Harvey Oswald testify in open court because he was himself assassinated by Jack Ruby, a nickel-and-dime hoodlum with Mafia ties who owned a nightclub in Dallas.  Ruby stood trial, was convicted, and died of lung cancer in prision while awaiting appeal.

No one who was alive in 1963 can seem to forget where they were and what they were doing on that infamous day.  We all recall it in complete detail.  It's as if time stood still.  Why?  I believe it is because for many of us it represented what I titled "the death of innocence." 

Evil was suddenly possible.  There were no barriers left.  Civility was dealt a severe blow.  Progress being made toward hope for a better tomorrow was suddenly and instantly suspended for a season.  We collectively pondered the question, "If a man can shoot and kill a President, is anything out of bounds?"

Of course, since then conspiracy theories have abounded.  Did Oswald act alone?  Was there a second or third shooter from the grassy knoll or a manhole cover?  Did the Warren Commission's finding that the single bullet theory that simultaneously maimed Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Governor John Connally in the front seat really have merit?  The debates wore on and on for years, and still persist.

Was it Cuba-backed sympathizers who killed him?  Was it a Mafia-inspired plot because of the Kennedy's pursuit of Costa Nostra crime families?  Was it Communist-inspired retaliation for the Kennedy blockade of Cuba when the U.S.S.R.'s long-range missles were discovered on Cuban soil?  There was no end to the speculation in those days.

While on business in Dallas a few years ago, I walked from my hotel down to Dealey Plaza and took my self-guided tour of the Sixth Floor Book Depository Museum.  It was a sobering reality to stand on the very spot where the unforgettable events of my youth had transpired.  I've never forgotten the feelings. 

I sifted through all the various theories about his assassination as I walked from room to room.  Then I stood at the window where Oswald fired three bullets (the casings were found in the nest after he fled), apparently one of which was the fatal shot if the Warren Commission is to be believed. 

They called it "the shooter's nest."  It was chilling to consider what thoughts must have been running through Oswald's mind that morning as I stood where he had crouched at an open window overlooking Dealey Plaza when the motorcade passed below.  Kennedy, standing and waving to an adoring crowd in an open Lincoln convertible was certainly an inviting target. 

But as I stood there that morning, as a former expert marksman myself (with a semi-automatic M-16, mind you), I considered that it would have had to be one heck of a shot, especially with having to cock, load and re-acquire my target three times within a matter of seconds at a target that was speeding in the opposite direction after the first shot rang out.  It was a bolt-action rifle with a scope that Oswald used, and a kill shot certainly could have been possible in the hands of someone skilled in its use, but I just thought over and over again as I stood there, "That was one heck of a shot (or two or three) from here." 

Like many Americans I read many, many books about the assassination in the years that followed, trying to understand and make sense of an irrational act of violence.  I even read the whole Warren Commission report.  Senator Arlen Specter (now D-PA, formerly R-PA) was the author of the single-bullet theory while he served on the Warren Commission. 

And I always thought to myself back then, "You'd have to believe pigs can fly to believe that theory."  But what do I know?  After all these years no one has ever offered a credible counter-theory that has seemingly stood up as well as Specter's, though it has certainly been attacked as uncredible by experts.  And that single bullet, the one they found on Kennedy's stretcher in the aftermath at Parkland Memorial Hospital, is not the one that accounted for the fatal head shot.  

I've forgotten most of what I read now.  I would have to say for myself that's it's still an open question as to the who, the why, the how about Kennedy's death. 

As a family, we still wonder about the premature passing of Lin and Flemming too.  In subsequent years there have been many other family members whose mortal lives have likewise ended too soon by our reckoning, and we search in vain for answers here and now.

But I do know this for sure -- for me and many others in my baby-boomer generation this day in history represents the loss of innocence.  After that, anything was possible.

When Lin and Fleming were laid to rest, President S. Dilworth Young of the First Council of the Seventy penned these lines while sitting on the stand at Flemming's funeral in the Douglas Ward:

I sit and ask myself:
These boys, these
Fair-haired
Boys,
Their hopes and
Dreams,
Once bright,
Now moving in
Eternal
Light.

We do not
See
That Light;
We know 'tis
There, but
How, or
Where, we
Cannot know
Until that
Blessed day
When
We, the veil
Worn thin
Will see
Them
Waiting patiently
Within.

Then what
Will be our
Joy?
No pain!  No
Fear!
But more!
We shall then
Know
The reason
Why.

What matter how
They
Go.  If in Thy sight
They stand before
Thee RIGHT,
Lord,
Stand there
Right.

If you're over fifty years old, your comments and memories are welcome here. . .