Our prophet, Thomas S. Monson, wrote an article in the Ensign magazine in April this year where he laid out three pieces of a treasure map to eternal happiness.
1. Learn from the past2. Prepare for the future3. Live in the presentLearning from the pastMother was born on May 12, 1927, as the youngest and always the smallest of the four girls to goodly, soft-spoken parents. Michael Joseph Hart was a house painter in Dedham, Massachusetts, and Sarah May MacLeod Hart was a loving homemaker. Mother’s father was a kind man who loved to take his four girls to the Barnum and Bailey Circus at Boston Garden. The Great Depression put him out of business, yet he continued to pay his workers even when there was no work until his money ran out.
According to Mother, her mother
…was very nonjudgmental and kind and not prone to running anyone down. She always put everyone’s needs before her own…she was happy and liked to laugh. She was a great example of a good mother to me and I wish I were more like her. Mother was more like her mother than she knew. She learned from and was always proud of her parents and her ancestors. She talked often of her parents, Aunt Kitty, Uncle Duncan, Cousin Harry Johnson, and all the MacLeods, MacIsaacs, Harts, Garrigans, and the others. Like her mother, she was kind and full of life.
I think on my own learning years, when I had decisions to make, whether to do what’s right or choose the wrong. I was never worried that if I made the bad choice I would be caught and punished. What influenced me to make right choices was whether I would make my mother, actually my mother and father, proud or disappointed. It has been their Christ-like, never-wavering love that has influenced me to this day. I’m sure they learned that from their past, from their parents.
Like her father, Mother was caring and she loved traditions.
On the 4th of July, Mary, Jean, Margaret, and Sally would get 50 cents to buy fireworks. They’d eat salmon, peas, and new creamed potatoes, a New England tradition. On Nickel Day they’d take the subway to Revere Beach and buy rides, corn on the cob, and drinks. Supper was always eaten at 6 p.m. at 18 Belknap Street. On Fridays they ate fish, on Saturdays they had baked beans, sometimes with franks, and on Sunday mornings they’d reheat the beans in a pan with butter and eat them on toast. She loved it. In the summer they hiked into the woods to pick wild blueberries. They’d wash and pack them into jars and sell them door to door for 15 cents a pint. Her mother also made them into blueberry pies and muffins.
Mother had learned from her past.
What about preparing for the future? She also planned for the future. In mother’s patriarchal blessing she was admonished to “…be firm in your desire to search out your kindred dead, for many are waiting…” Mother was dedicated for many years to researching her ancestors.
Let me explain why she was doing this. Mother and Dad met at the Buddies’ Club on Boston Common, while he was on a weekend pass from the Navy just after WWII. Mother and her friend and sister worked there serving breakfast, and Dad and his buddy were looking for something to do on a Sunday morning. He was pretty striking in his Navy uniform, according to Mother. When she went home she told her mother about the nice-looking sailors, and her quiet mother suggested she and her friend bring them home for dinner. In Dad’s words:
All that week we kept thinking about those two good looking girls. When the (next) weekend came around, we had another pass.. (so) we headed back to the Buddies Club, and sure enough, there they were working at the counter again. After talking with them for a while they asked us to dinner at their home.
They were married shortly after this, but they had one problem. Mother was Catholic, and Dad was Mormon. They studied the Book of Mormon together, and soon Mother had what she called “a big spiritual experience.”
..like a high-watt light bulb illuminating my head with the truth of (the Book of Mormon).She was sealed for eternity to her sweet heart in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. And soon her heart turned to her ancestors. She wanted to share the knowledge she had gained with her parents, Uncle Duncan, and all her other ancestors. She understood that genealogy isn’t just about finding your ancestors. It’s about those sealing ordinances that take place in the temple, that bind families for eternity.
Finding your ancestors is not an easy task. She searched city and church records in Nova Scotia and Scotland and Ireland. When priests moved from one parish to another they often took all their records with them, or churches burned to the ground, turning their records into smoke. These are serious roadblocks to a genealogy search. Sometimes you just can’t figure out where to look. One time Mother was having an especially difficult time finding someone. Then she had a dream, and in the dream her deceased Aunt Kitty came to her. Mother said something like, “Where are they?” And in the dream, Aunt Kitty said, “Port o Port,” which is in Newfoundland. Thinking “why not,” Mother turned her search to Port o Port and found ancestors she never thought she would find.
Thanks to Mother’s diligence, she has found 405 family members, and many of their saving ordinances have been performed.
Her greatest desire recently has been to share the joy she has experienced over these past 60 years with her sisters. Or rather to encourage them to come to the same understanding about which she has felt so strongly.
Mother has truly prepared for the future of her family.
What about living in the present? Mother was full of life, energy, and fun. Let me tell you about some of the traditions we shared with Mother. When we were young Mother and Dad dragged us in nonair-conditioned cars and tents to Yellowstone, the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, Glacier Park, and many other exotic locations. Sometimes we slept under the stars and once woke up to a thick, wet fog. They were wonderful times.
Mother was always a trooper. And some of her stories are family legends. Like the time we went to Yellowstone and thought it would be a good idea to have a tuna fish sandwich picnic at a table by the side of the road. This was back in the late 50s or 60s, when bears were plentiful and visible in the park. Soon a big old bear came lumbering up to our picnic spot, and we scrambled. Dad threw him a loaf of bread. And mother, with a plate of olives in her hands, jumped headfirst into the car ahead of the rest of us. Then she proceeded to eat every olive on the plate.
Another time, before we were born, Mother and Dad drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Dad was tired, so Mother drove for some distance. At one point, she went off the road and into a meadow. Dad woke up when he heard her say, “Hey, they give.” She was talking about the small willow trees and bushes she was driving through in the meadow. Since they gave way, she stepped on the gas and kept driving until she maneuvered the car back onto the road and continued to Jackson.
She was full of energy. I remember the many hours she spent when she was a teacher in the Relief Society. She taught once a month, and she spent the entire month, it seemed, putting together posters, slides shows, videos, and other materials for her well-thought-out lessons. She dedicated that same energy to everything she did. As a child she was a tap dancer and dreamed of being a Rockette, but she was too short. As an adult she took singing and piano lessons from Beth Ivie. She enjoyed listening to the Tabernacle Choir, as her father had done when she was a child. She enjoyed the Bar J Wranglers chuck wagon dinner and show in Jackson, and we went there many times, including to celebrate Mother and Dad’s 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries. And we went there on the 4th of July this year. These are family traditions of which she was often the focus, because she was the talker, the story teller.
If I could sum up how Mother learned from the past, how she planned for the future, and how she live in the present, it would be with one word: family. And today we, as family and friends, both morn her progression to the other side of the veil and remember the great life she lived with us here.
When Christ was betrayed, scourged, and unjustly and illegally tried and convicted, he was hung on the cross with nails in his hands, feet, and wrists. He had already paid the price of the atonement for our sins in Gethsemane. How painful and heartbreaking it must have been for his mother and friends to witness his suffering and dying there on the cross at Golgotha. The whole earth groaned, the Holy of Holies was rent from top to bottom, earthquakes shook, and cities were swallowed up. It was a dark and terrible time. Yet, three days later, on that glorious morning, He broke the bands of death with his resurrection, and the angel said, “He is not here, for he is risen.” How joyous must have been the reunion when Mary Magdalene recognized her resurrected savior and said, “Master.”
These past few weeks have been emotionally painful for Mother’s family. Yet, we know she is now with her parents. She received three priesthood blessings assuring her that they were waiting. How joyous must have been their reunion. And having lived through a period of pain and now a separation, how much more joyous will our reunion be.
I testify to you today that I know I will see my mother again and greet her with a big hug. I know she will be full of that life-giving energy that she’s always had. And though it is painful now, this time of separation will someday seem as a brief moment. I am thankful for our Savior’s atonement and resurrection, and I share my testimony with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
