Young at Heart

One day when we were visiting Mom and Dad, one of Mom's friends told me how they had gone on a hike with some of the sisters in the Relief Society. “Your mother hiked so well for being a woman of her age”, she said. That really hit me. I guess she was going on seventy then, but I had never thought of my mother as getting older. With her enthusiasm for life and her happy laughter, she always seemed young at heart and I could not imagine her getting older and not hiking along with the rest of us.

Time passed. we moved away. Mom and Dad came to see us in Texas on their way to serve a mission for the Church. They spent 18 months driving and walking on the red dirt country roads of southern Alabama making friends and sharing the message of the restored gospel.

We next saw them at BYU when we drove up for Alyssa’s graduation. It was a very happy time to be together. Alyssa had married Eric a few months earlier and now Mom and Dad had returned from their mission. Mom was radiant with joy at this reunion. They were living in their Bishop’s Guest Quarters in the second story of a barn. The only way to enter the apartment was to climb a spiral stair case. Every day Mom climbed those stairs, without complaint. I don’t remember ever hearing Mom complain about anything. Later that winter she hurt her knee with a fall. She made one more hike up Doughnut falls with us. It was difficult with her knee not cooperating.

Rafting on the Salmon

In 2011 Mom and Dad went with us to Yellowstone and then to Stanley, Idaho where Kristina was working. We all went rafting down the Salmon River and of course Mom wouldn't miss out on that adventure. She climbed in that raft with the rest of us and had a great time -"at her age" -ever young at heart.
-Darell