Easter This Year

Twelve years ago in April, my Aunt Reta passed away. Her funeral was held the day before Easter. At the cemetery, I was comforted knowing that one day, her recently departed soul would one day be reunited with her body. 

Maybe this is why I was able to post on September 14, 2012 something that I had wrote two weeks earlier. “My Mom is well. She is with my Dad once again and having a joyful reunion with her sister, Verla and her parents. She has even met my Grandpa Jackson for the first time.  I will miss Mom, but I have the faith that she is where she needs to be with her family that she hasn't seen for so long.”

All of this is possible because, Our Savior, Jesus Christ, was willing to suffer and die for us.  On Sunday morning, 2000 something years ago, he conquered death and was resurrected. This bought the hope that eternal life is possible. We have the hope of being reunited with our loved ones, even those we have not met in this life. When our souls are reunited with our bodies, they will be new and whole. Aunt Reta will have a youthful body once more and Dad, her brother will hear once more. Mom is reunited with Dad and has met extended family. That is the blessing Easter brings to each and everyone.

When I saw this video more than twenty years ago, it brought comfort for me. It has since become one of my favorite LDS Church videos. I will see my parents once more and my brother one day will be whole again, all because what our Savior, Jesus Christ did for us one Easter Weekend.

Waiting for the Shoe to Drop

18 years ago in the early part of 1995 (or the latter part of 1994, my brother Mike left Idaho for a few months. For a time, he rented a mailbox (not from USPS) in Henderson NV. He knew a young woman from his days working at JR Simplot’s. Apparently things didn’t work out and he headed to Woodland Hills in Southern California to visit my brother, Steven. He didn’t stay long before he headed out. It was our impression that he headed north to Washington State, but he never got there. For a few weeks, my family and I had no clue where he was or if he was alive. While he was gone, I had a dream that he had come home.  When I told a co-worker of my dream, I accepted the notion that he might have reunited with my dad. Then one March or April day, Mom called to say he had arrived at the house. All that I remember is that he lost a gun somewhere in Northern California or Oregon.  (He told Mom that it was stolen.) In the spring of 1995, Mike parked his Jeep in the back of house where the clothesline once was.  Mike hasn’t left the property since he returned home, except for a ride in Mom’s new car. Mom drove the car to northern property line of Dad’s farm (that was sold after Dad died). Mike will go out in the front yard to greet us when we come. When we had lunch at Mom’s a few years back, he helped with the yard work. This fall he put up a fence where the garden once was. While Mom was alive, she would get groceries and other necessities for him from town. When Mom left for Washington, a grocery fund was set up at Swenson’s in Paul. The plan was to have an employee deliver groceries to him while Mom fought cancer. But he never called in an order and when she had her funeral in Paul a month later, we bought him some groceries and visited with him. He doesn’t leave the property and mostly stays inside the house. My brothers and I make monthly trips to the groceries stores in the Mini-Cassia area. When we can’t a neighbor delivers groceries to him.

It is hard living with someone else’s mental illness. It is like waiting for a shoe to drop as it hanging by a shoe lace from the light fixture. Since my brother carries a gun with him at all times, we always make sure he knows when we are coming home. Even Mom felt threatened a few times when she come home from church or shopping trip. Years ago, there was a shooting at the Salt Lake Library. The person who held some of people hostage had a history of mental illness. At first, I blamed the family for not doing enough until I realized that my family and I were in similar shoes. I realized the pain they lived with and how helpless they felt.

Four years ago, I wrote my young friend while he was in the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah. “Jay needs to write to my brother, so I better go.  My brother is undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia and/or bipolar.  And my mom’s home teacher has asked we write to Mike on a regular basis.  Mike is one of the reasons that my brothers and I quit going home.  Mike disinvited some family members, so my Mom decided not to be partial.   I miss home, but I know I will get back there some day.  In the mean time, I just need to be understanding of Mike.”

I recently told another co-worker (I have a different employer than I did 18 years ago) that I have been mourning the death of my brother for 15 years. It is more of a loss than death. For one, Mike is still breathing.

But I miss the person Mike once was. He was a kind person who once gave me a teddy bear for Christmas when I was in junior high. I remember the evening before I left Idaho to go LDS Business College; he took me out for pizza. On the way home, one of his favorite songs Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” came on. He told me the background of the song. During my freshman year, I bought the album (a recording on black vinyl 12 inch disc). Since his return home, Mike has become fixated with murder. It is one reason that he carries a gun is because he feels threatened. He has accused Mom’s home teacher of murder and others too. When Baby X was found burned in a county landfill, he personalized that event. Last March, he was upset when a person drove from Pocatello to commit suicide on the lawn of a Mini-Cassia health facility. Mike hasn’t been the Mike I grew up with and I feel that loss every day.

It is difficult dealing with someone has a mental illness. But I am learning to hope and keep the faith. When resurrection happens, the old will be cast off and newness will come. And as I said to Elder Pugh four years, I need to be understanding and to have patience. I remind myself again and again, this too will pass.

*Please note, I am not in the pictures. That is my older sister, Mary, who happens to be a redhead like me.*

 I shared this on Facebook, but I thought I would include the video. It was the only video I saw, but I liked that included a clip from ABC News or whatever network Harry Reasoner was with in 1975.