POSTLOGUE - IT'S ALL RIGHT
HERE'S WHERE I WAS BORN
When it came time for the family to leave for Germany to complete work on a doctoral degree, there were good-byes to be said in Brigham City. Father was in his eighty-seventh year, my oldest son in his thirteenth.
We made the rounds, three generations of us. At Three Mile Creek he guided us down the old country lane to the remains of an old log hut, apparently used last as an animal shelter. Showing some dismay at finding it in such a state of dilapidation, he finally said rather falteringly, "this is where I was born.”
The tour to several other places of sentimental concern took most of the morning, and just before noon we arrived at the cemetery where he directed us first to his father's plat. Here he paused long enough to reminisce about his parents and grandparents and the gospel principles which had moved them and
him through a lifetime.
"I can't picture what. it would have been like if they hadn't embraced the faith and come here. We haven't always lived exemplary lives, any of us, but we’ve generally at least tried to live by the counsel of the prophets. It's been a good life. You’d do well to hold fast to the faith, you and your. children. It's the best counsel I can give you," he said. The tears welled
in is eyes as he -put his arm around my shoulder and directed me across the cemetery to his own plat.
BURY ME HERE
Pointing to a spot next to the grave of his first wife he said, "This place is reserved for your mother and next to it here is where I'll be buried. Of course, I'll still be here when you get back." But he wasn't. After surviving a prostate operation, he succumbed to pneumonia. Until the respiratory problem set in it appeared that he was well on the road to recovery and almost ready to go home, he assured my brother, Ray, at the hospital.
He weakened rather suddenly and slipped into semi-consciousness and then general unconsciousness, from which he only partially rallied a couple of times before he finally slipped away into the eternity for which no man was ever better prepared.
My brother, Scott, was with him to the last. Earlier in the night he had smiled at the nurse, had spoken briefly, assuring her, " very thing is all right." Now again within the last few seconds before the end he awoke momentarily, smiled at Scott and said, "hello." Then, as though that were sufficient assurance that all was well, he passed peacefully beyond the veil. I sometimes hear him saying to me, “Oh pshaw, don't get discouraged. Confound it, boy, you've got to be firm."
The wilderness, that naught before would yield,
Is now become a fertile, fruitful field.
Where roamed at will the savage Indian band,
The templed cities of the saints now stand.
And sweet religion in its purity
Invites all men to its security.
There is my home, the spot I love so well,
Whose worth and beauty, pen nor tongue can tell.