My 60th Birthday Surprise!

To my great delight, I was given a wonderful present for my birthday onJune 4th.  My wife had arranged for us to spend about 24 hours in Salt Lake City, and while there, we would have a party at ou, just east of downtown, with friends and family.

We woke up early on the 4th and flew out of Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.  Upon arrival, we were picked up by my wonderful sister-in-law, Janeen.  On our way to her home, we stopped by a Davis family favorite, Crown Burger, to buy and take with us some of their delicious specialty: the Crown Burger--a burger with pastrami.  Yum! 

We sat around their table and savored this delight along with some onion rings, and had a lively discussion about my recent blog posting.  We were then given the keys to Janeen's car, and left to embark on an excursion to the Westside, the area where I grew up, in honor of this my 60th birthday.

Because we had to pick something up downtown, I decided that we would start by visiting nearby West High School, my alma mater, that looked to be closed for summer recess.

It really looks in good shape.  There are buildings on its campus that are new, and from what I have heard, it is one of the leading high schools in the Salt Lake Valley.  I attended West between 1968 and 1971.  It was a memorable time of my life; a time of learning but also a time of socially evolving.  It was where I began dating, where my singing prowess began, where I began learning about myself.

Looking down on West and the area where I grew up on westside of Salt Lake City is Ensign Peak, shown here from the West Campus.  I hiked it a number of times, exploring it and ultimately summiting it.  It looks over the State Capitol building, which I would visit after summiting the Peak.  The Peak seemed so imposing in my memory, but in reality, it is rather modest, and now not far from homes.

A little over a mile west of West, on the other side of the railroad tracks, we drove by the location of my maternal grandfather's grocery store and meat market.  It was also where his family lived and where my mother was raised.  When I attended Jackson Junion High, a mere 200 yards from this structure, I would sometimes park my bike behind it, because at the time my sister and her new family lived in the little apartment adjacent to the store/residence.

Throughout my life, my mother would tell stories of her upbringing there with her 10 siblings.   It is located at the corner of 800 West and 300 North.  It lookes to be in decent shape for being as old as it is.  To me, it's

interesting that as buildings age, and others occupy them, the lives, the history, the stories of those who have occupied them are inevitably lost, hidden in the walls. But if walls could speak, particularly these walls, what stories they could tell!

We drove around that area, looking at the empty lot of where a home stood, the home to where I was brought from Holy Cross Hospital where I was born.  We looked at where Jackson Junior High, my junior high, once stood.  It likewise is gone, existing only in my memory.  We looked at the old 28th Ward building, which I was told was now a sober living residence and where a great-nephew of mine currently resides.  We looked at the home of my childhood friend, Richard Jacobsen, where I spent hours playing after school on my way home.

About a quarter mile, some three blocks from where my mother was raised, we parked the car and walked around the immediate area near my childhood home.  How small everything seemed!  The streets, the homes, the alley way, everything, had been so signficant, so large, in my memory. But I was small at the time, and now being of adult stature, everything is so small, so modest.  

We walked around, ultimately heading toward my childhood home built in 1953.  Its current occupants have lived there longer than I did, and they have kept it up and have made changes to suit them (like the fence in front).  Within the walls of this very modest brick home, my early life took place, and those memories are abundant and remarkable.  So many stories.  So many feelings.  So many hearts.

Returning to our car, we drove around other structures in the neighborhood.  My mind and heart were flooded with all of the stories and the images of bygone years.

One building in my neighborhood in which I spent countless hours and which is likewise filled with so many stories, is my church buidling. For within its walls, I first came to know my Savior, Jesus Christ. and was loved by good, salt-of the-earth people.  Now vacant it looks forlorn and overgrown by weeds and trees which are in need of trimming, with wood-covered windows.  What occured inside the walls will forever exist vibrantly in my memory.  The building will not be shabby,  but new and fresh and well-kept.  

After driving around the neighborhood and looking for scenes and evidences of my early years, we headed east toward Salt Lake Cemetary. I wanted and needed to pay respect and to honor the burial site of my parents.  Near them, a number of aunts and uncles are buried.  It is always a solemn time for me to visit a cemetary, but as I stood looking down at my parents' headstone, I once again realized that it was only where their bones lie.  Who they were, their essence or spirit, is not entombed there but exists in heavenly realms.  I believe that they continue existing there, that they are free from the shackles of mortality. I believe that they have perfect knowledge of their past and present existence.  I believe that whereever they are, they are concerned about me and love me dearly yet.

The cemetary is not far from Emigration Canyon.  So we jumped in the car and headed east toward the mountains.  Driving up the canyon I've drive so many times, we arrived at the cabin where I was greeted by a wonderful sign that my caring, loving brother had put up in my honor.  

Soon, family and friends arrived for the cookout and gathering.  It was just wonderful to see these important people in my life.  I am grateful for their love and care.  It was truly a blessing to be able to spend my 60th birthday with these beloved people.  Thank you, my sweet wife, for being so thoughtful, so caring, so loving.

The Ultimate Transition of My Friend Jason

         My friend Jason Akers passed away last Sunday.  His wife Christine asked me to speak at his memorial service. I tried to memorialize him in a respectful, heartfelt way.  It was very hard to talk because of my profound sense of loss, but I managed to get through it.  Since learning of his death, I've kind of been in a somber mood.  This loss has been an affirmation of my knowledge of how fragile my existence is and of the importance of living in the moment.  So here is my funeral talk.

Jason and I were friends.  I was very open about my life and he was open about his.  As such, we would sometimes discuss very personal matters.  Because I opened up to him and he to me, I came to have a sense of who he was and what was important to him.  I felt privileged that he trusted me enough to share his inner thoughts and feelings.  Whenever he would open up with me, I felt I was on sacred ground.  I came to really understand this man, my friend.

As he pondered his mortality and impending death, we would sometimes talk about his life on a macro scale.  In other words, we talked about what he felt he had accomplished and hadn’t accomplished, and what he had become and what he hadn’t become.  He lamented to me that he felt that there was so much he hadn’t accomplished and hadn’t become, and that he was trying not to be bitter about being deprived of the balance of a lifetime to accomplish and become.

I would like to share with you this solemn day what I saw that he had accomplished and what he had become.  And even though ultimately his life was cut even shorter than he expected, I would propose that he leaves a legacy of accomplishment and becoming.  Accomplishing in life does not necessarily equate to becoming.  A person can be very accomplished in their work or career, or even in responsibilities in their church congregations, without becoming a good individual with good values and character.  Jason would say that he didn’t accomplish much. I choose to focus on what he became, and I only wish (and I’m sure he would agree) that he had been given more time to become even more.

The first becoming I would like to share is how he became a good and caring man.  It would be a great understatement to say that His upbringing was challenging.  He would sometimes share with me how his family of origin was full of dysfunction and abuse and it would have been easy for him, and understandable for him, frankly, to live in that dysfunctional world for the rest of his life.  Instead, he made the choice to escape it and to try to have a meaningful life.  He used his upbringing as a bad example, as something not to allow himself or his family to become.  Sometimes, that can be a huge motivation for us and it certainly appeared to be a great incentive for good in him.  He became a caring man.  I marvel at how he was able to become so caring.   I knew he was a caring man because he cared for me, and I will always hold that caring in my heart.

The second becoming I am witness to is how he overcame challenges and adversity.  He was blessed with a dogged determination, or even, a stubbornness of spirit.  Perhaps his family would occasionally see a stubborn father or husband, but that same tenacity was useful in stoically sticking with changes he wanted to make in himself.  Once Jason put his mind to do something, it was eventually going to happen if it were in his control.  He obviously had many challenges and adversity, especially near the end of his life.  But for me, his determination was something to behold.  I have learned more about determination from his example than I have learned from just about any other person.

The third becoming would be how important his family came to be for him.  Having had such a challenging childhood, with an absence of family role models other than a kindly grandmother, he could have believed that life’s cards were stacked against him and given up.  But being the fighter that he was, he determined to give his children what he had not received.  Did he always do the right thing in his child rearing?  Nobody always makes the right decisions in the excruciatingly difficult job of raising children, except for God.  But he tried the best that he could.  His intention was be the best father possible.  He would tell me how deeply he cared for Aaron and Linnet and Mallory.  Christine was his childhood sweetheart and the key to a more normal family life than what he had experienced.  She was and is very important to him. And now that he is in heaven, I must think that he deeply misses them all.

The fourth becoming I would like to touch on was his great, insatiable thirst for knowledge.  He always seemed to be reading something.  He never seemed to get enough.  He loved to learn and anybody who talked with Jason for any length of time would soon understand that he was well-read.  He could wax eloquent on any number of subjects and not superficially.  He was always open to new ideas, new concepts, new ways of looking at things.  Even in the last difficult time of his life, he seemed hungry to know about what was happening to him.  It is a humble person who realizes that he or she does not know it all and wants to become better informed, and Jason personified that humility.  I have to believe that part of Christine’s attraction to Jason was that desire to learn more and use that knowledge to benefit himself, his family, and others.

Living each day to the fullest would be the next becoming I perceived.  This was something that became important to Jason in the last few years of his life.  He came to appreciate being alive and being completely aware of those around him.  He grieved over not having been more awake and cognizant of each day.  Especially at the very end, when he knew that his time here on earth was drawing to a close, he sincerely wanted to enjoy each day and to experience life as fully as his failing body would allow.  His pain would sometimes get the best of him, but that determination and positivity would kick in.  No wonder that he went to Disneyland last Friday.  That alone speaks volumes.

Lastly, the becoming that might be the most important was his embrace of the Gospel plan.  Even though he was quick to downplay his knowledge of Gospel doctrine and scriptures, he knew that what he had been taught was true and eternally important.  He believed in the power of prayer.  He knew that Heavenly Father lived, that Jesus was His Son, and that the Savior had performed the Atonement, and Jason was determined to live Gospel principles the best way he could.  He took pride in belonging to the Church, and dearly wanted his children to be blessed by its teachings.

So you and I are left with this great legacy of this good man.  Funerals are not for those who’ve passed on but for those who remain.  What shall do we with his life?  Or perhaps more importantly, what shall we become because of Jason Akers?  Shall we not be more good and caring?  Shall we not overcome adversity and challenge with dogged determination as he did?  Shall we not hold our families close to us and put them as the highest priority in our lives?  Shall we not hunger and thirst after knowledge?  Shall we not live each day as if it were our last—because it might be?  Jason’s untimely death reminds us of that fact.  And finally, shall we not seek truth and determine what God’s plan is for us?

Let us hold close and sacred his memory and allow those memories to influence us to be better people—better parents, better children, better citizens, better disciples of God.  What will be said by others at our funerals of our becoming when we pass through the veil and embrace Jason? 

   

What A Journey

As I am wont to do, I become philosophical when confronting challenges and trials.  I look at what is occurring, what I am experiencing and feeling, and then postulate ideas based upon them.  It is probably only normal and to be expected that as I near the end of a two-month journey with my daughter, son-in-law, and four grand children, I try to figure out the “takeaway” of it all.

In speaking with people, I have been told how wonderful it is and how blessed it must be to have them stay with us.  To be sure, it has been a great and memorable experience, but as with most life situations, it occasionally has involved some “rough sledding.”  My intent is not to pass judgment on the past two months, but merely to comment on what it has been like.  I hope that came through as well in the last posting I did as seen through the eyes of one of the triplets.  There have been some wonderful, touching moments, and there have been others when I left home with children screaming and crying and feeling grateful that I was able to leave.

Much of societal change and invention in this day and age has to do with self-satisfaction and finding meaning in one’s life.  The mantra seems to be that if one feels stress, boredom, anxiety, challenge, sadness or pain, that person should do whatever it takes to simplify life, to ease up on the gas pedal, so to speak, and to do whatever it takes to reduce the difficulties of life.  It seems to be a societal belief that having these “negatives” in one’s life is unacceptable and to be avoided.  If you doubt what I am saying, you need to go no farther than to the television and look at the substance of the commercials.

Not that one should deliberately look for difficulties to steer through in life, but what has been my life experience has been that I have grown the most in my character in those moments when I have found myself in the crucible, those very difficult circumstances.  Obviously, my challenges compared to those of others might very well be considered light weight or barely registering on the difficulty scale, but nonetheless they have been difficult for me.  I see them as divinely given/allowed for specific purposes and for my exact needs.

I have written previously about the experience of the decision and then attending graduate school in an effort to effect a career change while serving as a lay ecclesiastical leader of a congregation of 200. I did this while working full time and being a full-time husband and father.  These were times of extremity, times of frustration, times of extreme weariness, times of self-doubt, times of non-stop intensity.  I think about other times in my life when obstacles were numerous, feelings were intense, circumstances were challenging, and I have lived through them all. 

Most importantly, in my extremity, I have grown the most and learned lessons that I would have missed had I chosen/been given an easier path.  I have become what I am today, and while there could be a discussion as to exactly what that is and to my value in the pool of humanity, I am comfortable and accepting of where I am.  That does not mean that I will rest on my laurels or whatever other metaphor comes to mind.  It means that I will not be afraid to put myself/be put in challenging positions in the future because I know they will be for my best good now and in eternity.  It means that having my New York family here was a difficult, wonderful experience.

Every tear, every scream, every child crying jag, every toy picked up, every diaper changed (especially the poopy ones), every dish and utensil washed, every dollar spent on additional food, every child buckled into a car seat, every wiggling child held during a church meeting, every door slammed, every window dirtied by sticky hands, every piece of furniture moved to accommodate cribs and pack and plays, every email not sent from my office that now serves as a child’s bedroom, every light globe broken, every peanut butter sandwich made, every piece of cheese and grape cut in half for the kids’ snack, every piece of food swept off the kitchen floor or picked off the floor and pew at church, every room vacuumed, every night’s sleep awakened by a crying child, every towel wrapped around the wiggly body of a just-bathed, wet child, every spill dried up, every child pushed in a stroller, every child swept off their feet because they were where they shouldn’t be, every fly taken out of a baby’s mouth (yes I did that once, and luckily it was dead…but so gross!), every bottle warmed up in my bleary-eyed state at 6:30am, every plastic latch opened and shut purchased to prevent kids from getting into a cabinet or drawer and emptying its contents, every face washed over the sink because of food or dirt, every toy on the floor that becomes an obstacle course for me, every ladder or chair that is in my front yard to stop kids from going where they shouldn’t go or from eating dirt, every leaf pulled and shredded into pieces in the house, every Christmas ornament yanked off the tree, every child crying because they’ve gotten themselves stuck, every bib put on and taken off covered with food, every attempt by a little hand to turn on the disposal or to reach something on the dining room table, other furniture or Christmas tree, and every hand print or pen/pencil mark on a wall or closet door, will have its opposite, endearing, smile-producing (and maybe tear producing) memory. 

I want to remember the contentedness I felt and they felt as I held one in my arms while they drank their warmed morning bottle.  I want to remember their delight in the bubbles I blew on the front lawn, their laughs as I sprayed them with a hose and played catch with them on the lawn, their “wan-wan” sounds when they heard dogs, their utter amazement and delight as they looked skyward to see a helicopter or on the ground to see a flower, their giggles as I pushed them in the swings at the nearby park, their giggles as I played “Eye Winker, Tom Tinker, Nose Dropper, Mouth Eater, Chin Chopper and Gollywhopper,”  their looks as I fed them grapes, pieces of cheese and crackers, or snuck in a piece of banana with their oatmeal, their imitating my animal sounds while sitting on my lap and reading countless books to them, their playing and giggling with their cousin Daniel when he came over, their wide-open eyes gazing upon the Christmas tree, their imitation of placing a toy on their heads because I placed one on mine, their dancing to “Hold Still…Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle” and “At the Hop” and “Pumpa’s favorite” Chantilly Lace, or “Put Down the Duckie,” their joy at watching “Yo Gabba Gabba,” their trying to make adult words like “thank you” and “I love you,” their lying still while I changed their diaper and put the legs to their sleepers back on them, the joy in their voices when they talked with their Daddy on the phone or watched him on the I-Phone or Skype, their tiny hands in mine as we walked, their waiting in line for me to play “Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker Man” with them, their dancing to the sounds of dueling toys, their giggles as I threw them in the air, over my shoulder, swung them in front of me, or played with them on their beds, and their quietness and stillness (at least for a short time) as I sang a lullaby to them before putting them down for a nap or for the day.

All of the challenges and difficulties and accommodations will melt away in the future as I think of Emily’s grateful, if wan, smile and heartfelt thank you for helping her and giving her support at this time of her extremity.  They will melt away when I remember Elizabeth’s inquiring face then charming, full-face smile as she looks at her Pumpa and wonders if he is just being silly or is he saying the truth.  They will melt away when I remember Charlie, the boy everyone says looks like me, looking at me and imploring me to hold him while I read him a book while he sucks on his binky and holds his blanket.  They will melt away when I remember little chubby Lucy looking at me through those slits of eyes and saying quite articulately, “I love you.”  And they will melt away when I think of Eddie constantly holding out/up his arms for his Pumpa to hold him and hug him.

This has been a difficult, demanding experience, but the transition from a full, noise-filled nest to a quiet, empty one for Pumpa and Geema will likewise be a new, if wistful, one.