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.
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| 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]
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| 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.
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.
[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
