~ Our Story ~: REMEMBERING MOM

Talk about those tragedies that you hear about around the holidays and think "what a sad story... sure makes me appreciate my life..."

My mother was a really nice person. She loved everyone no matter what, and always managed a very optimistic attitude, even when bad/sad things happened (like when her kids made difficult choices, or when my parents lost two businesses at the same time and had to start over, or when her house burned down, etc).

That being said, she was also a very shy and quiet person. I mean, she would talk to people, but she rarely talked about herself, even when prodded. I remember doing a 3 hour car ride with my step-mom once and thinking afterward how I now knew more about my step-mom's life than my actual mother's life.

I think part of that was because as kids and teenagers, we kids (there are 9 of us) probably didn't think to ask my mom about herself much, we were focused on other things. And then my parents got divorced in 2004. I was 23 (I'm second oldest, and had gotten back from an LDS mission the year before), my youngest brother was 7 years old. I was engaged at the time, and got married about 2 months later.

Soon after the divorce, my mother remarried. My 3 youngest brothers (ages 7, 9, 11), went to live with her and her husband Charles off and on (in St. George, Utah, and Kooskia, Idaho), until my father got full custody. My mother then remained living up in Idaho from that time forth. She made a couple trips down to visit some of us kids a couple times (when I lived in Salt Lake City), although she never seemed to have a working car, so her visits were often short or on someone else's schedule (her ride). Some of my siblings and I were able to make the trip to go up to Idaho and visit her in Boise or Kooskia (Kooskia is 4 hours north of Boise). Kellen and I were able to make one trip up there to visit shortly after we were married (my grandma and several aunts live up there). But all visits were few and far in between. I had my first child in 2008. Shade met her for the first time right before he turned 2. And then not again until Olive was born in 2013. It seemed to be very difficult to arrange things to meet up with her for all of us kids, especially after my father had his first accident (LINK) and was no longer able to drive my brothers to meet up with my mom.

We tried to keep in touch through emails, facebook, and the occasional phone call (my mother very much disliked phones), but even as we started getting older and tried harder to include her in our get-togethers and such, it remained difficult to actually get together. Eventually, some of my siblings (myself included), decided we were going to let her know that we were not okay with her not being an active part of our lives. So one of my sisters initiated the difficult conversation, and we each added our own perspectives to it. We had tried being nice about the topic before, but that did not change anything, so we all had to be very blunt and clear about the issue. It was not an easy thing to do, but it finally got the ball rolling.

At first, I think my mom may have felt like we were against her, as some of her responses suggested, but then I think she started to understand where we were coming from, and that we only had good intentions - that we wanted to get to know her and have her around us more. Things changed quickly.

Before this confrontation had happened, I had initially asked my mom if she would come out to visit and help me when Olive was going to be born. I offered a free plane ticket, and a chance to see beautiful Michigan. But it ended up "not working out" for various reasons. Kellen's mom was nice enough to come out to help instead (I think she even had to cancel some of her cleaning jobs). I really appreciated having her here, especially since Shade got sick the night before I was supposed to go in for the c-section, and it would have been a lot more difficult to have him stay at a friend's house, as was our back-up plan. Two months later, the confrontation with my mom occurred. One week later, my mom had arranged things with her work (she did home care for some elderly people) to come out and visit me. I could tell she was sacrificing getting a paycheck to visit, but she did it anyway. It was all very last minute, and almost didn't happen (trying to set up a buddy pass to fly at the last minute between Kellen's sister and my mom while I was at work was very difficult), but it did! I got a whole week with my mom all to myself! And we sure did wear her out! I was so excited to have her here, I took her everywhere I could, we ate out almost every night, I took a personal day on my shift the night before she left, and best of all, she got to meet and play with her grandkids (LINK)! And then on top of that, she ended up having a 10-hour layover in Salt Lake City where my older sister lives, and she got to visit with my sister's family also.

Shortly after that, she started making plans about when she was going to go visit all her other kids. She got some time off in November around Thanksgiving and decided to drive a loop and visit everyone who lives in Utah and Nevada. She started out stopping in Salt Lake City to visit with my older sister, who had just had a new baby and has a teenager. Then she headed to St. George where my oldest brother lives with his family (he has 2 daughters, one of which was almost 2 and got to meet her grandma for the first time).

Then the night before Thanksgiving, she started heading over to Carson City, Nevada, to meet up with the rest of the family (the other 6 kids live in that area) for Thanksgiving. But she never made it. She had a terrible car accident only 2 hours from my sister's house. She was thrown from the vehicle and died that night. (LINK)

I don't know if it is more sad that she died while she/we were all so young, or that she died during the process of finally trying to build a relationship with her kids. Either way, we all miss her very much, especially after what happened with my dad and step-mom (LINK I, LINK II). It is times like this that our understanding of God can be tested, but this is when I am grateful to have the knowledge of the purpose of life and eternal families available. God never said it would be easy, only that one day, if we stay true, that it will all be worth it...

Older Pictures (first one is at my parent's wedding, the rest are of us kids)