My Mother

Many times I cried when Mothers’ Day came around because I felt so guilty that I wasn't a “good enough” mother—wishing that I could be a better mother. Now my children are all grown and most have children of their own. Now I can see past my own inadequacies of motherhood, and I can enjoy Mother’s Day again. Today, I can recall my own mother and reflect on her traits and what a good mother she was.

My Mother

My mother was a very soft-spoken woman, with a gentleness that was obvious to all. She never yelled at her children, but we always felt guilty that we had disappointed her when we did something wrong or we didn't meet her expectations. She was a very intelligent woman and very creative and imaginative. She would often tell us stories that kept us waiting breathlessly for the end.

She painted landscape pictures and you could sit next to her while she painted and talk to her and she’d never rush you to finish your questions or thoughts. She patiently waited until you got up your courage to say what you wanted to say (or to ask). Then she answered thoughtfully. You could talk to her about anything. Sometimes when she was painting a scene, she would get frustrated with how it was going and say, “I’m going to burn this whole mountainside up and do something else with it.” Then with a couple of strokes of her brush, all the trees, would disappear, and she’d ask you what you thought should grow there, and she’d begin to create another 
type of scene. Once she painted a beautiful valley, but then put a bank of fog over the bottom of the valley so you couldn't see what was there. I used to ask her what was under the cloud and she’d say, “You decide what you think is under the cloud. Is it as lake? Is it a forest? It is a meadow? What do you want it to be?” I liked that painting the most because I could imagine anything underneath the fog.

Once, I convinced my youngest sister (13 years younger than me) that if you knew the magic words and said them three times as you twirled around, you could fly into the picture and find out what was beneath the fog. I found out later that she tried for years to do that! She had believed me.

Mother was a very spiritual person. She had great faith and love for others. She always looked for the underdog—the person left out or one who seemed to feel uncomfortable, and then she’d go up and talk to them and make them feel welcome. She was not comfortable in leadership positions or speaking in public. She had grown up in a Danish immigrant household, and had quit high school to work as the school janitor to support her family so she had never gotten her high school diploma. In many ways she felt “inferior” to others, but in the ways that matter, she was very competent, intelligent, loving and very thoughtful of others.

She would never gossip about others, and would never listen to others gossip. It was something she

Mother

didn’t tolerate. She always said kind things about others, and was never judgmental. She was always saying how nice someone’s dress was or how she enjoyed their talk, or complimented them on little things.

My mother was about five foot seven feet tall, slender, with naturally curly dark hair. (Since I am five foot two inches, I always felt very envious.) She loved the outdoors and especially hiking. My dad worked at Hill Air Force Base in Utah and got off work about 3:30 p.m. so she’d often make a packed dinner in the summer and we’d go up to Mueller Canyon with our lunch when Dad got home, and hike the trails until we ate our packed dinner. Now Mueller Canyon (which is less than four miles from our old home) is a state or county park and costs $10.00 a car to get into plus a permit to eat there. But back then it was something we did all the time—and we loved to do it.

My mother wasn't perfect—she had a temper—and my

Grandmother Hansen

Grandmother Hansen, her mother-in-law, could bring it out. One time we had all gone down to Bryce Canyon with Grandmother Hansen.  We were all so excited to hike down the canyon, because to us, that was the best part of the trip. Dad was carrying my three-year-old sister, Janet, on his shoulders, and mother was preparing six-month-old Will for the hike. That was when Grandmother Hansen hit the roof! I don’t recall the actual words that were said, but the meaning was clean—ladies don’t climb down mountains with tiny babies. Babies are too fragile to be dragged down trails in the heat and dust! Mother tried to explain that they did it all the time—they loved to do it. Grandmother stood firm; mother would hike down the canyon with Will over her dead body!

I remember watching the altercation with wide frightened eyes. My quiet, soft-spoken mother never got upset. She never argued with anyone over anything. I’d often wished she would stand up to my father, who was very domineering and overbearing, but she never demurred. Yet, here she was standing up to Grandmother Hansen.  I looked to my father to see if he would support mother or grandmother; he mumbled something about his mother being right. Mother and grandmother strode angrily went back to the car with tiny baby Will.

I can’t remember much about the hike. I’m sure everyone else had a wonderful time, but all I could

Bryce Canyon

think about was what was happening in the car at the rim of the canyon. Was Grandmother yelling at Mother like my father always did when someone disagreed with him? Was Mother crying? Was it hot in the car? Was the baby crying? Finally we got back to the top and I ran to the car.

Mother and Grandmother sat there silently starring out the front window. Little Will was asleep on the back seat. I was afraid to ask anything at the time, just gave Mother a big hug and told her all about the hike. Later I found out that she and Grandmother had sat there without speaking the whole time we were gone.  I gained a lot of respect for my mother that day!

My mother had her first bout with cancer when I was 14 years old, right after Will was born. She gave birth to my youngest sister Ann three years later. She had her second mastectomy when I was 18 years old, and she never recovered. The last two years of her life were very difficult and she passed away when I was 20 years old. I was one of the three oldest children. My oldest brother was married and had a baby, and my next oldest brother served a two-and-a-half-year mission to Denmark, but he was home and just married when Mother died. My four younger siblings, ages 17, 14, 11, and almost eight-years of age when Mother died don’t have the many memories of mother that we older siblings had.

My sisters (from left), Ann, Coleen, Janet, myself with my dad

One of the hardest thing about being a mother was not having a mother I could call for advice when I had questions about mothering. That was the same, I am sure, for my three sisters, also. So we at times called each other and asked how to do things. As the oldest mother with the oldest children, I had to blaze the way. It was no easier for any of us sisters because we never lived near each other while our children were growing up, so we had no one to share the problems of motherhood with. Even the two times my husband served in Vietnam, and I went home to Utah to have a baby each time he was overseas, my older sisters were living elsewhere, and my youngest sister was a teenager. So I didn’t have a husband, a mother, or even sisters with me when I delivered my babies—but I did have my Aunt Ruth, my mother’s sister, who was very dear to me.

My dad and my mother

I am not very much like my mother in some ways; I am loud where she was soft-spoken. She was calm, and I am hyperactive. She had a peaceful spirit about her, and I definitely don’t. But we both love the Lord and have faith. We both love to hike, and read, and tell stories, and do things with our children. We are both creative in different ways—she loved to paint and I love to write. We both love music. 

We are both mothers who tried the best to be good mothers. 

I Recognized Death's Shadow

My life changed when I was nine years old. I learned about death and suddenly my life was no longer secure, but frightening and uneasy. I realized how easily death could change the rhythms of my life; forever afterwards I waited for death’s scythe to strike. 

Mom & Will 1953

In February of that year—1953—my mother gave birth to my youngest brother, Bill. During her pregnancy she had had strange unsettling, prophetic dreams that the baby would not be able to speak, but quack like a duck. This bothered her and she prayed continually that the baby would be all right. She felt that something was wrong with his mouth and that he wouldn’t be able to speak correctly. One night after she had prayed for weeks that he’d be all right, she suddenly had a feeling of peace come over her and she knew he would be okay. When he was born, he was “tongue-tied” and the doctor had to cut the tissue that constricted his tongue. Afterwards he was fine. My mother felt that her dreams had warned her of difficulties in his development that her prayers had prevented, and that his “tongue-tied” problems were all that were left of these developmental abnormalities. [i]

Beth & Darl in Monticello 1949

Afterwards, my mother started having prophetic “warnings” that something was going to happen to people. She would be doing something and suddenly look down and she would see a coffin; soon after she would hear of someone’s death. Mother had always had a special sense of ESP, but previously it was always to help others. When I was five years old we were living on a dry farm 12 miles out of Monticello, Utah. One day I was playing out in the fields with my older brothers when I cut my foot deeply on a metal corner of a farm cart. Even though Mother was at the house somehow she knew I was hurt, where I was and reached us almost immediately after it happened. She was able to stop the bleeding, and carried me back to the house. She quickly drove us to Monticello to the doctor for stitches, but he was in Colorado for the day, so the nurse wrapped up the deep cut so it looked like I had a club foot; I still have a scar.

Ingeborg & sons

Another time in Monticello my mother’s older sister Ingeborg was dying of breast cancer in Brigham City. Because there was no telephone out on the farm where we lived, Mother was worried we wouldn’t get word of Ingeborg’s death in time to drive to Brigham City. But right after Ingeborg died, she appeared to Mother and told mother that she had died; Mother got up and had everything ready so they could leave immediately when they received the telegram from Monticello later that day.[ii]

However, these “warnings” of death that mother foresaw after Bill’s birth were disturbing. She told me about them, and said that because they served no purpose, but only upset her, she prayed and prayed they would go away.

But a foreshadowing—an unease that something was wrong—never left her. During her pregnancy she had noticed a lump in her breast, but she ignored it. She did not want to consider the implication that it might be cancer because her older sister Ingeborg had died of breast cancer, and her younger sister Ruth had also lost a breast to cancer. Just the thought that she, too, might have the disease was too frightening.

However, as much as she wanted to deny it, in the beginning of the summer she finally gave in to my father’s plea to go to the doctor to see about the lump in her breast. At that time the standard procedure was to do a biopsy and if the biopsy showed cancer, they would do a mastectomy immediately, without bringing the patient out of anesthesia. I hadn’t even known my mother was going in for a biopsy that morning, but that afternoon my father told me she had breast cancer and they were afraid she was going to die.

At first I thought Dad was just exaggerating as he usually did. Aunt Ruth, who was closest to Mother in age and who had lived with us a few times, had had breast cancer, but she was still alive—in fact she was presently serving a mission in Denmark. Yet I also remembered Aunt Ingeborg, who had died of breast cancer a few years earlier. My grandmother Hendrickson, mother’s mother, had just died, but they had said she had heart problems as well as cancer. I couldn’t see why mother had to die right away like Dad was saying.

But late that evening our neighbor Mrs. Mann came by after Dad had gone back to the hospital. She hugged me tightly as she told us how she had been sitting with mother in the hospital after the surgery. She said Mother had suddenly stopped breathing and turned gray. She said Mother had died! Mrs. Mann had panicked, screamed and called for the nurses. Just then one of the general authorities walked in the room. He said he felt that someone in that room needed a blessing and he immediately administered to Mother. Mother gasped and began to breathe just as the nurse came rushing in.

The nurse yelled for help as she said mother was having a problem with the after-effects of the anesthesia because of her asthma. Mrs. Mann said a bunch of nurses and doctors surrounded mom and worked on her and she recovered consciousness. During that time the general authority quietly left. I don’t know who the general authority was who administered to mom was, but Mrs. Mann and others told me later of the veracity of the miracle that brought mother back to life. Mrs. Mann also said the general authority promised Mother that she would have one more child, (and she did, Ann, born three and a half years later, a year before she had a second recurrence of the breast cancer—in the other breast.)[iii]

Mother was in the hospital for several weeks, and we couldn’t visit her. I worried, imagining what had happened to her—what she looked like. What did a person look like who had died? Was her skin still white and ghostly? Why wouldn’t they let us see her? Was she deformed and sick? Would she ever be well again? Would she always be in bed?

When Mom finally came home, Dad was always telling us not to bother her—to stay away from her because she was too weak, too sick. He was always reminding me to work extra hard to help mother, or she would get sicker and die. I would look at Mom as she lay sleeping and wonder if my real mother had died and this frail ghost had taken her place.

Mother never really recovered from that first radical mastectomy. Because the cancer was so large, they had removed a lot of muscle and breast tissue and her chest was concave. For a long time she was so weak and her “spirit” was gone. She laughed and smiled, but she was different. She was very self-conscious of her body and felt she was deformed.

More than that, I think she accepted the realization of her eventual death. She didn’t say it; she didn’t need to. I saw it in her face and in the quiet acceptance of her sorrow and pain.

Mother didn’t die for 11 more years after much more suffering and pain. But at nine years of age, I recognized the spirit of death that had entered my life that summer. I always remembered that time as when I recognized death’s shadow

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[i] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 58

[ii] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 53

[iii] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 55