Scott's mother died on May 30th after a short bout with an aggressive cancer. Her funeral was this last week up in Salt Lake City in the church that she attended. It was a nice funeral followed by her burial in Elysian Burial Gardens.
Each of the four children spoke and did a good job. Scott told some good stories about his mother; I'll include a transcript of his talk for future reference. I got to play a duet of How Great Thou Art with my sister-in-law Michelle who was nice enough to drive up for it on a very busy day; my mother accompanied on the piano. My sons Everett and Lincoln played the organ with others praying and being pallbearers. Most of the grandchildren attended with just a few missing. I was grateful all my children attended except for my daughter on her mission who was able to watch via Zoom.
After the burial, we returned to the church and had a lovely luncheon put on by her ward. It really is an amazing service when people you really don't know put on a luncheon for the family which turns out to be a fair amount of work for them. Scott had made a good-sized donation for the food so they decided to make prime rib and little potatoes along with Caeser salad, fruit salad, and a dessert.
My name is Scott Bergeson. I am the youngest of my mother’s children. I want to thank you for the love and friendship and support you showed for my mom. I have heard about some of the kindness you showed for my mother over the nearly 20 years she lived in your ward. Thank you for befriending and loving her.
I love my mother. She was a wonderful woman. Not perfect, but I love her nonetheless. This might come as a shock, but my mother sometimes became angry. When I was about 10 years old my mother was mad about something. Maybe it was work, I don’t recall, but maybe I never knew. She yelled out, “I’m mad! I’m so mad! I’m so mad I could just spit! Spit! Spit! Spit! Spit!” At the time I was in elementary school. We would spit all the time as a sign of how cool we were. I thought, “Well, mom, if it helps you feel better, you should do it.” Spitting never really did much to help my own anger, and I had a hard time imagining my mom actually doing it.
When I was in 10th grade, some of my friends decided to go to a movie. Although I had previously mowed a few lawns or babysat or delivered newspapers, I was out of work at the moment. I made the mistake of asking my mother for $4 to go see a movie with my friends. She replied, “Do you think I am made out of money? Do you think money grows on trees? If you want money you can just go out and get a job!” So I did. I worked at a little restaurant about 4 miles from my house. I was only 15 and couldn’t drive, but my mother drove me to work and picked me up afterwards for nearly a year until I got my drivers license. In retrospect, it would have saved her a lot of time and money if she had just given me the 4 bucks. But I appreciated her lesson in self reliance. In fact, her entire life -- at least the part that I knew -- seemed to be a lesson in self reliance.
My mom never considered herself to be a good student. She felt like math and spelling were hard for her. She absolutely abhorred Scrabble, which combines both math and spelling into a slow, long, tortuous game. Ironically, she became a business math teacher and then an accountant. One thing that helped my mom get started in math was playing dominoes with her grandma, Orpha Sibyl Brown Buley. Orpha lived in a converted garage apartment near my mother’s home. She would invite my mother over and they would play dominoes. Incidentally, I still think the way you play dominoes is to stand them all on end about an inch apart, lining them up in curved paths and then knocking them over by pushing over the domino at one end. But I guess there is a *different* game you can play. Orpha patiently used the dominoes game to teach mom basic arithmetic. And what an amazing journey followed! My mother’s life was later filled with numbers! She was an accountant and a CPA. She also designed cabinets and lamps -- a lamp that might be in the living room of someone in the neighborhood. Both of those activities require lots of figuring.
My mom liked being outdoors. She joined the Mountaineers -- a group of hikers -- and she worked to outfit us with hiking gear. In those days there was never enough money for the things we wanted, so my mom had to be creative. When I was about 6 or 7 years old I remember going to the army-navy surplus store where my mom bought an enormous pair of wool pants. She cut them in half. From one leg she sewed a pair of hiking pants for me. From the other leg she sewed a pair for my brother Glenn. We went to REI for shoes. That was before REI became the Eddie Bauer of the hiking world. They carried used hiking boots in those days and that’s how mom got us started. I remember going with her and the mountaineers on a few rainy hikes through the woods and a few hot hikes on Mt. Rainier until I was old enough to go hiking and camping with the Boy Scouts.
Mom also loved to sing. She taught us to sing when we drove. In the days before everyone plugged into their own electronic device, we would sing on our trips to Vancouver or Spokane to visit relatives. We sang songs like Bill Grogan’s goat, I love to go a wandering, Once an Austrian went wandering, White coral bells, I love the mountains, and so on. I think those songs and our singing them as a family reminded her of the times when she was a little girl and her mother would play the piano and my mom and her sister and her mother would sing together. Those were happy memories from her childhood.
Mom felt like she needed to keep Glenn and I busy during the summers. So she signed us up for summer camps, made us roof and paint the house, and sent us to summer school. When summer school was over she signed us up for gym programs and generally acted on her belief that idle hands were the devil’s workshop.
For quite a few years, my mom did leatherwork, as Cindy mentioned. One of the items she made for herself was a wallet. It was a serious woman’s wallet with space for coins, checks, a check register, and pictures. The outside was stamped and carved with pictures and words. On one side of the wallet she embossed her name. On the other she embossed the phrase, “Yes, we can!” I see this as an excellent illustration of mom talking back to those inner voices of doubt and analysis to which we are all prone. It may have been especially important for her because of the negativity that was part of her life. It was more than a slogan. It was a mantra that encouraged her when she was blue.
My mother loved the scriptures and wanted her children to love them too. I don’t know about Guy and Cindy, but Glenn and I were somewhat reluctant disciples as children. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons my mother tried to bring us together to read, but Glenn and I were only interested in worshiping the saints or the raiders or some other very spiritual football team on TV. One particular Sunday when I was probably 11 or 12 years old mom called Cindy, Glenn and I to the dining room table and said we were going to read the bible. Glenn and I were complaining. We started arguing and picking at each other, the way that children can do. Arguing is a funny thing. It can be an entertaining game for the kids but an enraging display of immaturity for adults to hear. Glenn and I carried on for a few minutes until my mother suddenly stood up, slammed her scriptures closed and said, “Oh never mind!” and went to her room and closed the door. In silence we sat there, suddenly realizing the negative effect of our fighting. Cindy said something like “you guys are idiots” before she walked out too. I like to think that we got better.
When I was a boy, my mother had a few good friends. One of them was June Broomhead. June was the choir director at church. She was widowed and nearly old enough to be my mother’s mother. It may be that my mother needed a mother figure since her own mother died about the time that my parents divorced. June was very kind and she and my mother had a good relationship.
I remember one evening, a few years after the previous scripture reading incident, June was at our house. The after-dinner conversation drifted to the topic of reading the scriptures. The three of us -- my mother, June, and me -- were standing together. I wasn’t really “in” the conversation and wasn’t paying close attention until June turned to me and asked, “Do you have a favorite scripture?” It wasn’t quite a “deer-in-the-headlights” moment, but it was close. I was on the spot and stammered a moment while trying to remember any scripture at all. Then somehow, miraculously, I produced 1 Ne 3:7, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded.” Maybe it is everyone’s first favorite scripture. I was so relieved to have come up with something. My mother beamed and June said, “Yes, that is a favorite of mine too.”
My mom’s love of the scriptures took time to develop. Her parents were not religious. The only religious exposure she had as a girl came from her grandmother, Orpha Sibyl Brown Buley. She would occasionally take Phyllis and perhaps DeEtta to Sunday School. Mom said that that was the only time she went to church.
When mom was a young married adult, she wanted to find a church. It seemed like things in her life and marriage went better when they attended. They began a search that was wide ranging but struggled to find something that felt right.
In 1955, my parents drove to San Antonio, TX, where my father was stationed with the Air Force. On the way they visited SLC, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and a few other places. In SLC they toured Temple Square. My mom was interested. She turned to her husband and said, “You know, they might have something.” My father answered, “You don’t want to get mixed up with these people.” That was a humorous beginning to what eventually became a long and wonderful journey of faith for my mother and for her children.
In spite of my mother’s many talents and accomplishments, she often felt like she had failed. She felt bad about her divorce, thinking that perhaps it could have been avoided “if only.” She was raised with some negativity, and those voices sometimes haunted her as an adult. But my mother found solace in her faith, in her friends, and in her children.
One of our church hymns is “I’ll go where you want me to go, Dear Lord.” The song is really a prayer, committing ourselves to love the Lord, to do what he would ask us to do, say what he would want us to say, to be the person he wants us to be. Thinking about my mom’s life reminds me that we don’t know what someone else may be going through, so it seems like we should default to being kind, giving the benefit of the doubt, and trying to see the good in others.
Kind words of encouragement can be so powerful in our lives. I know that my mother deeply appreciated the kind words that you gave her when she was your neighbor. In honor of my mother, and in appreciation for your love and service, I will close with the second verse of this song.
“Perhaps today there are loving words that Jesus would have me speak.
There may be now in the paths of sin some wanderer whom I should seek.
O Savior, if thou wilt be my guide, though dark and rugged the way,
My voice will echo the message sweet. I’ll say what you want me to say.”
I know that we have a loving Father in heaven. Jesus Christ is a manifestation of that unfathomable love. Because of Christ’s atonement, we can be reconciled to God and have his presence in our lives. I believe that Christ wants us to extend love and mercy and forgiveness to those around us. Because of Christ’s atonement, my mother and I will embrace again in God’s presence. I know she had this faith and hope in her life and I am grateful that she helped instill that in me. And I hope that each of will embrace the light that comes from Christ and grow closer to him.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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