The Death of My Father
One night when I was about five years old, I was lying in bed between my parents and I had fallen asleep. Sometime during the night I awoke crying uncontrollably. When I finally calmed down, mother inquired as to why I was so upset. I informed her that some angels had come down out of the sky and were taking my daddy away. I do remember how they hugged me and reassured me it was just a dream. Mother told me when I was older that she and dad did not sleep the rest of that night. It had been such a frightening experience for them. Within the year, my dad was gone.
In November of that year, my dad came home from work not feeling well. I could see him lying in the bedroom as I peered from the living room where a little pot bellied stove stood. Mother asked me to hold up a small blanket by the stove so it would be warm when she placed it on my dad. I was playing and I didn't want to hold it and I complained. She asked me if I wanted my daddy to get well. Finally, she handed the blanket to one of my siblings. This really bothered me for a few years. I wished that I had been more obedient.
Daddy just kept getting worse and nothing more could be done for him at home. Swede Pearson, the ambulance driver who was a good friend of the family, was summoned. I stood confused and frightened as Swede and his assistant lifted dad gently from his bed and strapped him on a board cinching the straps tightly to make sure he would not fall off. They then took him outside and placed him in the ambulance. I was kneeling on the couch looking out the window as they pulled away. I saw my brothers running down from the school yard. Someone had gone to the school to tell the boys that dad was very ill and was going to the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. They were trying to get to him to say their goodbyes. The ambulance did not stop. My mom went in the ambulance with dad and Mary and Rayrna went with Rayrna's friend George Clark to Salt Lake.
My Aunt Gwen and Uncle Earl had come to Dividend to take Darre11, Frank, Beth and I to their home in Goshen while mother and my sisters were away. My daddy died the next day, which was Thanksgiving in November of 1936. When I went to the Burraston store the day after Thanksgiving with my brothers and cousins, the clerk who was a relative of my Aunt Sarah Burraston's remarked how sad it was that my daddy had died. I had not been told and I screamed, "My daddy is not dead" I ran home to my Aunt Gwen hoping she would tell me it wasn't true. But, of course, it was true, and our lives changed drastically. Daddy had just turned 44 years old on the 5th of November.
On the 29th of November, Daddy's body was in a casket in front of the window in the living room. Our tiny little white framed house was full of friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects and attend Daddy's funeral. We kids all played outside that day with some of our cousins. One particular relative, a teenage boy named Joe Wilde was there that day and had come with his family from Price, Utah. When it was time to leave for the funeral, someone lifted me up to kiss my daddy goodbye. Oh, how cold and hard he was. That wasn't the soft warm Daddy I knew. That haunts me to this day.
In my mind I can still see me sitting on the front row of the church at the funeral service which was in the Elberta ward house. There were lots of people there. After the services we drove from Elberta to Midvale where Daddy was buried in the Midvale Cemetery next to my little brother William.
I remember how frightening it was to see the big hole where the casket was to be placed. We all stood there and watched as the casket was lowered into the hole. They don't lower the caskets today while the family is there. That night we stayed in Salt Lake at a hotel where we could look out the window and see the temple. It was fun being in a big hotel. It helped to ease the pain.
Forty-four years old is much too young to die. My dear mother had turned forty in January. Mom was now a single mom with six children ranging from 18 months to 18 years with no home, no formal education, and no insurance. What was she going to do? I can only imagine since becoming a wife and mother what might have been going through her mind that day. How was she going to take care of this family with no visible means of support? Where would we live. We were in a mining community and the mine owned the house we lived in. We would have to move. Where?
My first five years had been wonderful. We were a family of six siblings and a loving mother and father. I was five years and nine months old when my father died. All our lives changed after that. My mother had to be the head of our family. I don't remember us kids ever fighting. 1 played a lot with my brothers and their friends especially with Frank who was just two years older than I. Mother worked cleaning houses, but she was always borne when we got home from school. She was patient, loving, caring and kind. We were all very loving with one another.
Taken from MarDella's journals. See more in Blog Posts.
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