Happy Mother's Day

Dear Sarah Jane & all our future kiddos:

I love grandmas. I love grandmas because I have 2 of the best grandmas. You are lucky to know them and they love you just as much as they love me. You are also lucky because you have grandmas who love you, my mom, and daddy's mom. I am so happy that you know my mom, Grandma Bigelow. You will have many opportunities to play with her and feel of her love. I know you will quickly learn how much she cherishes you. It seems that every picture I send her she posts on her wall at work. The collage is getting so large that one of her clients calls it her "Wall of fame". You will know her house and if you are anything like me you will know her smell. Did you know that people have unique smells that can remind us of the special people in our lives? It's true.

When you were little Sarah, your daddy and I slept with your fuzzy frog blankey for a few nights so that it would have our scent. Then we put it in your crib so that you would sleep better. I imagine we will do that with the rest of our kiddos as well. One time when I was little I went shopping with my mom at the mall and we were walking through the perfume section and I refused to leave because I thought my Grandma Weldon was there. I could smell her and so I just knew she was there. It was just her perfume, but I knew her that way.

You will get to go swimming with Grandma Bigelow and bike riding on their greenbelt. We will celebrate many Christmases and birthdays together. I say it again, you will learn quickly just how much she loves you. She is a wonderful mother and grandma. We are lucky to have her.

You have another grandma who's just as special and loves you just as much but you won't get to know her personally while you are here on Earth but thanks to our Heavenly Father's Plan you will know her in the eternities. She's in heaven right now preparing a place for us. I want you to know your Grandmother Atchley. I didn't get to meet her either because your daddy and I got married after she had passed away and so I also want to know her better.

Your dad and I visit her gravesight and from the way he treats her grave I can tell how much he loves his mom. She must have been wonderful! I ask your dad stories about her and I am sure he will tell you many as you grow up. You will know her even if you can't see her now because we will teach you of her. Through the stories we hear we will learn of her, love her, and know her. Won't it be fun when we do meet?

I have asked your dad and his siblings to tell me about Grandma Adele and I intend to share them with you. There are many stories and some of them are long, some of them are short, some of them are funny, but all of them are filled with love!

I want to start by sharing with you the eulogy that your dad gave at her funeral. Do you know what a eulogy is? It's a big, tricky word isn't it? A eulogy is the story of someone's life. Through it we can learn about her when she was little as well as when she was big. We also have a copy of the talk on CD and so one day we will listen to it. Daddy sounds so young. If you listen carefully you can hear how much he loves her! Because this story is long I will only share parts with you at a time.

Remember how much everyone loves you and how fortunate you are for the wonderful extended family you have! Get to know them, whether personally or by way of others--I promise you won't regret it!

I love you!!

Mom

So, let's begin... Part 1(Remember this is your dad talking)

They always assume Rozanne's older because she’s married. They asked me to talk about my mom for a few minutes and I have been stressing over it for the last couple of days and worried about how good of a job I could do. About two minutes ago I was sitting here and I looked out and I thought, “You know, I don’t think I can say anything that can really screw her up in the minds of most of these people here.”

She was born August 7, 1936 in Milford, Utah to Marcus Joy Christensen and Hazel Johnson Christensen. She doesn’t remember much about Milford. She lived there until she was three. She was born into a loving family. Her father had a little jewelry store in front of the laundry and her mother did a lot of work in the jewelry store and sometimes her oldest brother would have to take care of her. Sometimes some of the women in Milford would call up my Grandma and say, “Hazel, you know what I just saw that was very scary?” And she would say, “Yes, I know. You saw Don with baby Adele on his shoulders on the bicycle.” Mom would hold onto Don’s hair or his ears as handlebars.

When she was three, in 1939, the family moved to Las Vegas where she had most of
her memories. She lived in an apartment in the back of a jewelry store which I believe is now the Four Queens. It’s no longer there. There wasn’t a whole lot of room there and she and her sister, Anne, slept on a covered patio or porch or something like that. She had a little tricycle and she would ride around in the alley behind the store and she would talk to the guys who were picking through the trash cans. Those were her buddies. Her Aunt Hattie came to visit … I just started a
story that isn’t right now. Oh, I remember – Her Aunt Hattie came to visit and she
mentioned something about all the trucks out on the street. She looked at her, very astute, and said, “Those aren’t trucks, those are diesels.” One of the rare snow storms, I wouldn’t call it a storm, but one of the rare occasions where there was snow in Las Vegas, she came out and wondered who put cotton on top of all the cars.

She had four older brothers, Don, Vern, Carl and Paul, and one sister, Anne. She respected and loved her brothers and sisters. It wasn’t always fun and it wasn’t always rosy. One time she put a chemistry set in the oven and blew it up. It belonged to one of her brothers and was for retaliation to something that happened to one of her dolls. It was a haircut or something that wasn’t asked for.

She went on a trip to Mount Charleston with her family one day. The family was up there in two or three different cars and when it came time to leave, she stopped into the bathroom. Everyone figured she was in one of the other cars and they all went home. I guess she just stayed there. She found a ride with another family that was willing to take her home. When she got home, her parents said, “Oh, you weren’t here.”

She didn’t like being alone. She never really cared to be alone. In later years when Dad would go on business trips, she would have some of the kids take turns sleeping in the bed with her. She didn’t like for others to be alone. She felt bad after her father died, she spent a lot of time going up to Las Vegas and visiting her mother because she didn’t want her mother to be alone. There is a good portion of people here that are from the Las Vegas area who saw to it that she wasn’t alone up there, but my mom would have to go up there, too, to spend time with her.

She has done a lot of visiting teaching in her life. I was looking through some of her journals in the last week and almost every entry was, “I went and I saw Evelyn today.” “I saw Martha today.” “I went over and took Jane to the doctor today.” She cared for all these ladies and she took care of them and saw that they were not alone.

She was a good student when she was in school. She had a little problem with seeing the chalk board in the front of the classroom. She found out that she needed to get glasses. She got glasses and she walked outside with her glasses for the first time and she realized that grass comes in blades and the trees had leaves on them! She thought that was pretty neat. She decided to keep wearing glasses and she didn’t take them off. I didn’t notice if there were any pictures out there of her “Bat Girl” glasses. She had some Bat Girl glasses that we really liked. Years later, sometimes if she would get a lot of encouragement, she would pull them out and put them on for us.

After Suzanne got contact lenses, she decided she was brave enough to get contact
lenses and so she went up to visit Shelly and Leah Kay Smith, who were friends of theirs from USC, he is an optometrist. She got outfitted for some contact lenses. Maybe those of you who have only known her for the last 15 or 20 years have only seen her with no glasses on.

After a while, as age sets in as some of you, a lot of you, know. She had to get bifocals. So, Shelly set her up with some bifocals where one lens was for distance and the other lens was for up close. She got used to that fairly quickly and sometimes she would be sitting at church and be at the organ testing it out, seeing how far she could see with each eye. Some of my friends would say, “Hey, I think your mom was winking at me.” I would say, “You know, she really likes you.”

She got a piano when she was eight years old. She didn’t get a piano. Her parents got a used piano but when she got married and moved out, then it was her piano. Apparently now it’s Rozanne’s piano. We all learned to play on that piano. She loved to play the piano. She practiced a lot. I grew up hearing the piano at home. She was called as the primary pianist, the Relief Society pianist, and whatever else, choir. She got called as the organist. In my mind, the organ is just the same as the piano because it has white keys and black keys and looks the same. She thought it was a little bit different. She never considered herself an organist. She said, “Well, I can do the piano, but this is a different instrument all together.” So she practiced. She would go on walks in the morning and sometimes she would take her music and walk down to the Church and practice the organ. She got pretty good at it. She did it for a while. She was organist at the temple once a month.

On her mission, in the MTC they bought a little keyboard. They didn’t have pianos in Africa because of the termites. She had a keyboard that she took. While over there, she played for the choirs, Relief Society, Primary, and sacrament meeting.

She taught some lessons. She taught some piano lessons. I see at least one student of hers here in attendance. There are probably more than that. She took that pretty seriously. She was pleased when she saw her students grow and progress and become better at the piano.

She taught piano lessons while she was in Africa. She taught some of the Sisters there and a couple of the Elders. Dad ended up giving the keyboard to one of the Elders. He had to practice a lot. He had a long way to go to catch up so he could teach people to play the piano.

She loved to listen to music. She liked all sorts of music. She really preferred piano music. She liked classical music. I can remember on one occasion where she was rocking out to some particularly happening elevator music. I took that opportunity to criticize the music. She would say, “Why is it that the music you listen to is good and the music I listen to is bad?” I said, “I don’t know. Why do you listen to such bad music?”

She was very quick witted and she could come up with smart responses but she had the disadvantage in that she didn’t ever say anything mean to anyone. So it made it a little more difficult for her than it is for me.

TO BE CONTINUED...