New House, New Life

 My whole life feels like a Tl:Dr post sometimes. So: the tl:dr version of my life is: we bought a house! And moved! To the neighborhood we have always wanted to move to. And it has almost everything I wanted for a house, including a view and a connection to nature. 

It is on 1.26 acres of land, most of that vertical mountainside, which means we have a lot of privacy and space around us, but don’t have insane amount of yard work, which is perfect for us. 

The actual process of moving was crazy, and I am deeply glad we are not doing that again for decades. We are still in the thick of unpacking, so the craziness continues - but even so it is amazing here. I feel like I am squatting in someone else’s much nicer house. I cannot believe this is actually our house, that we were somehow able to buy it. The kitchen/dining room alone is four times larger than our last one.  Here are some random pictures that partially show it. Today we made plum fruit leather (from our plum tree - and we have two apple tree, an apricot tree and a peach tree as well!!), and peach pie, and a plum compote.

 Cooking is so exciting here, and I have two ovens! I have wanted two ovens ever since I knew they existed. We use both a lot - for a family of 11 they feel like more of a necessity than a marker of luxury.

(Even Artemis does the dishes at our new house!)

(A side yard at our house in the morning light)

(Some of our property)

Pictures of Family Home evening and scripture study - both things that have been easier to do in our new house. Is it because change helps with bringing out other changes? Because the rooms and spaces are large enough for our family? Who knows, but I will take it!

Our quality of life, even amidst the boxes and furniture still in pieces is already much better as a family. There is more space for us to all sit together in the living room, we go outside more, and family dinners and cleanup are light years better. I am just so grateful God gave us the opportunity to have this house. We weren’t even actively looking when I found it, and it was out of our price range and went into contract with someone else first! Plus then the sellers picked our offer over a cash offer, which was crazy. Such a gift from God that we are here at all. And I love it here. 

Living room in progress: 

An Updated Bucket List for Life

In January 2012 Avram and I made a bucket list post,  which I happened to reread last night. Today is our 19th anniversary and so in honor I, in consultation with Avram, updated the list with what we have done, what is no longer on the list, and new bucket list items. But first, a small trip down memory lane.

Here we are in 2005, as young babies. These were our engagement pictures.

At Christmas 2011, shortly before the original bucket list was written.

And here we are now.

 (I'll let you decide whose goals are whose, and which ones are joint.)

Bucket List:

1. Become a full professor Still in the plan - things are looking great!

✔️2. Have six ten children What can I say? We are overachievers on our goals. 

3. Visit the five sacred places (to Avram): Jerusalem, Rome, Karnak, Jackson County, Missouri, and Nauvoo. He has been to three, I have been to four (Can you believe I have been to Egypt and Avram hasn’t?? Especially sad since he loves Egypt more than I ever could.)

4. Live in Jerusalem This was mine - still hasn’t happened but should in several years when we spend a year at the Jerusalem Center our school has. Avram had spent the previous summer living in Jerusalem and studying Hebrew while I stayed in Ohio with our girls.

✔️5. Get a PhD 

6. Buy a house I love - 😬 We have bought two houses - I cannot say I have loved either. Someday I still hope for this. 

✔️7. Get published We have both done this - Avram has published many articles, and Avram and I have published two articles together. One on Models of Motherhood in the Old Testament and one on Jesus Christ and the Law of Moses in the Book of Mormon (I am particularly proud of the latter).

✔️8. Get a tenure track job

9. Go to Gen-Con

10. Go back to school, get a Master's and maybe a PhD

11. Visit England again, and go to all the touristy places; watch a Shakespearean play, Stonehenge, Wayland's smithy, lake country, Cornwall, Ireland, London, Monthly Queen's college dinner, walking (as the national hobby), etc.

12. Visit the Continent, especially France and Italy.

13. Visit Alaska  While Alaska is cool, I am not sure why we put it on the list. There are a lot of other places higher on the list we want to go to.

14. Go on a holiday, where we rent a beach house for a week, and feel like amazing people.

15. Read the Three Musketeers in French This was Avram’s goal, but it is no longer.

16. Decorate a house (my house that I love - #6)

17. Go scuba diving

✔️18. Go snorkeling again 

19. Attend my children's Temple weddings/sealings  While we still fully desire our children to follow in our faith, what was less clear as parents of 3 under six years old was that we cannot put anything on a bucket list that involves others’ agency alone. We still have a goal of guiding and teaching our children and fervently hope they will all nurture life long testimonies, whether they get married or not, but not a bucket list item (Also, I am less focused on them being married, per se, than believing in God and our religion).

20. Finish the Hebrew bible in Hebrew

21. Read the Greek New Testament  What is also apparent to Avram is that in life, even an academic one, one can only focus on so many things, and while Avram has done some Greek it is not his focus. 

22. Go on a biking trip in Europe  I can still imagine biking in Europe, but more for a couple of hours. Long distance biking is more intense than I am looking for anymore.

✔️23. Teach a course on Biblical translation ancient Jewish interpretation. Avram just taught that this semester, and we figure it is close enough.

24. Visit the Grand Canyon, specifically go down inside the Grand Canyon. Ideally raft it.

✔️25. Visit Maine, stay by the ocean

26. Have a flower garden

27. Take the family to Disneyworld/Disneyland

28. Go river rafting

29. Visit the Berlin Museum

✔️30. Do a seminal camping trip with the family We have camped for a week in Maine, camped at Yellowstone and Sequoia national park, and have many more camping trips I want to take in the future, both big and small. I don’t know if by seminal I meant long or in an awesome place, but we have done both.

✔️31. Have all natural births (3/3 so far) Ok, I did have two epidurals and seven natural births, but honestly that feels close enough for me. I admit that this goal, while I had good reason for it (less intervention, the most birthing options, safer for low risk deliveries), feels a lot less important to me than other things now that I have lived a lot more life (like living children, parenting children). Also, while there are risks to epidurals, they are low enough that while I don’t regret a single one of my natural labors, and would do them the same way if I did them again, I wasn’t too worried about being required to have an epidural with the twins because other aspects of the birth were so much larger (trying to have them vaginally rather than a c-section, wanting to be awake and not put to sleep in an emergency c-section, which are much more likely in twin births- to the extant that they are all delivered in the OR).

✔️32. Nurse all children (unless they're adopted) I nursed all my living children. 😕☹️😢. Even Rowena nursed a dozen times or so. She never transferred very much milk, but I am grateful we were able to briefly do it, I even got to tandem nurse one single time in the NICU.

33. Do foster care  I still really care for foster care, but as our family has expanded I no longer feel that it will be something our family ends up pursuing. Perhaps something in ten or fifteen years will change my mind, but it is no longer a plan of mine.

✔️34. Be a temple worker Avram was a temple worker in the Columbus temple. We still plan to do it again together when our kids are a lot older.

In addition to the 17 surviving items from 2012’s bucket list, here are new ones we have added with 12 years’ more life experience.

1. Publish a book to the academy and a book for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (ideally a few more books, too).

2. Write an article for the Burgon society, a society devoted to the study of academic regalia.

3. Visit all 63 (as of 2024) national parks - I am 11 in.

4. Visit Hawaii 

5. Go on an anniversary trip to Monterey Bay, California. This was our original location for our honeymoon but we were intimidated by the cost and moved it to Cedar City instead and have always regretted that. We have been a couple of times as a family and love it there (Avram lived there for two years as a kid), but never as just a couple.

6. Have a fulfilling job or career outside the home.

7. Do an extended camping or RV trip around the US (for 6 weeks or 2 months).

8. Take our family on a cross country religious pilgrimage trip to LDS church history sites (and to national parks and DC and Avram’s parents in Virginia and friends in Ohio).

9. Someday have family reunions with my kids and their families where we all pile into a huge house or campsite and play games, talk, do fun things, visit nature and swim in a lake or an ocean, eat and laugh and play together and have s’mores around the campfire late into the night.

A Double Rainbow

 I feel like blogging. And Avram has begged me to write a blog post, any blog post to get the very, very sad post about our son Torvald off the front page of my blog, as it is his post that greets us anytime we go to my blog (which I still use as a landing page for accessing other blogs, or reading/showing past blog pasts and pictures to my children.) This blog, although poorly updated for much of its history, is 17 years old this month. 17 years! The least I can do is write a shiny new post for its birthday. 

Of course, in the universal song of bloggers coming back to their derelict blogs, much as happened. So much I could not even update you all (I am assuming all two of you) in one blog post. So I will stick to the cutest of my updates, while also distinctly NOT promising you to go over everything else  that has happened in our life for years in detailed and many future blog posts. For one thing, I do not even know if there will be future blog posts. I have read too many false promises from other bloggers that were never fulfilled in this vein, and I do not trust myself enough to be any different than they have been. Enough excuses, onto the cute (after some emotional trauma).

After Torvald we did not plan on trying for any more kids. Our hearts were broken, our family felt broken, my mental health definitely was broken. However, in September of 2022 I got a positive pregnancy test, and was shocked - it did not seem possible for so many reasons. I cried and cried - I was so terrified for the future, for the possibility of another baby dying. I hate being pregnant at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Torvald’s pregnancy was very physically difficult, and I worried this would be as well. Plus I had started taking a few classes at Avram’s university where he teaches so I could be prepared to apply for graduate for the next year. (I actually took the test on campus, and watched it turn positive in his office, where I did my studying every day). 

I scheduled an early ultrasound and at seven or eight weeks I went in to the office for it. Everything there reminded me of being there for Torvald two years earlier. By the time I was called back I was crying so hard I couldn’t remember how many pregnancies I had had to tell the sonographer. And then she brought my baby up on the screen and it was blessedly alive, with a heart beat and everything! And then she zoomed out, and there was another heartbeat, attached to another baby! I stopped crying, and then moved straight into a state of surprised shock I am not sure I have moved beyond yet, a year and a half later.

Sadly for me, it was a hard pregnancy. I felt mostly dead, most of the time. I continued auditing the two classes I was taking, but dropped the Ancient Greek class I was taking for credit because my nausea became too intense. I spent the entire pregnancy nauseous, even on drugs, and sick and even fainted once (briefly, but in an elevator full of college students, so fun!).  I spent the whole pregnancy terrified my babies would die, that I would lose not only them but my sanity as well. I audited two more classes the second half of my pregnancy, and going to campus and studying for my classes was the only thing that got my through, I couldn’t do physical labor, because I was so sick, but I could still read, and I could still sit in a classroom.

Early, but not entirely unexpectedly, my twin girls joined us earthside on April 25 of last year - 7 weeks early, but thankfully alive.

Somehow when I brought the pictures in it sized them differently. Do not take this as a sign of unbalanced love between my babies, but rather of my unbalanced knowledge of technology. Rowena Isis Ruth is the first picture, born 4 pounds 4 ounces and a full five minutes earlier than her sister at 7:40 am. Rowena has a softer spirit than her sister, but she also has a devious streak. She chortles when she laughs and has a superglue grip on anything she can get her hands on. My poor girl spent 63 days in the NICU because it turns out she doesn’t eat (long story short - had penetration, where liquids partially go down wrong tube, which led her to an extremely strong oral aversion and for seven months had an NG tube through her nose but now has a g-tube in her stomach), but she is a cute, if still petite, fighter.

Artemis Mary Nephthys is the second picture, born at 7:45 am and weighing 4 lbs 14 oz. She continues to weigh more than her sister which has led multiple people to exclaim that she is clearly the older sister, as if sizing of twins worked that way at all. (Someone else once told me it was clear that Artemis is the older twin because she was crawling and Rowena couldn’t yet. 🙄 Let us just say there are many myths about twins, most of them malarkey.) Artemis spent 3 1/2 weeks in the NICU, and then her and her sister were tragically separated for a time. Avram often says that Artemis is a hollow tube masquerading as a baby - she will nurse or take a bottle of pumped milk or take any formula she has been offered (in our search for a formula to help with Rowena’s extreme reflux we have tried many and Artemis just gets dragged along for her couple of bottles she has had a day for most of her life). Artemis loves crawling, although only army crawling, and has two bottom teeth that are stinking adorable. She wants to eat anything, move anywhere, and generally will be with anyone. 

Both girls are quite easy going and never cry unless they have a real need to be met.

Oh, enough talk and you need more pictures, you say? I live to oblige. Rowena has a rounder face, blue eyes, a light complexion and light hair that almost (maybe? Hopefully??? Is strawberry blond, and for the first seven months has a nose tube. Artemis has a more olive complexion, a more noticeable chin (Rowena seems to have misplaced hers somewhere), and dark brunette hair and hazel blue/green eyes.

Sorry, I don’t know why the pictures posted out of order - use your imagination to place them in order.

This is the most recent picture, so you get a bonus of my friend Carol from collage (best friends I have ever made were in college! Friends for life!) But for the purpose of this post the focus is on the two baby twins - my baby twins. Wait, what??? I have twins??? I know, I am still in shock too. My plans for going back to school for my master’s is pushed back a few years, but I still don’t know exactly what degree I want, so that hasn’t been a big deal. Twins have been hard, especially one with extreme reflux and a feeding tube, but I feel like we are slowly coming out of the hardest baby phase and maybe someday soon will feel like our lives are functioning again. But at least this hard, unlike so many of life’s trials and hardships, also comes with a mega dose of cuteness. These are are best bookends to our family, and the sweetest spirits I am grateful we have with us.

The Son I Carry in my Heart

 I have been reading old blog posts, specifically one about morbid thoughts I have had during pregnancy. At the time I only had Elisheva and Lydia, but I had worried with both of them about what if they died? Or I died? And then it did happen. I had a son die. I was so young back then. I was 25 years old, and so hopeful for the future. I wanted a big family.  I wanted Avram to get a Ph.d. I wanted Avram to get a job as a professor, and even favored BYU for him to work at. I wanted to live within walking distance to BYU. Check, check, check, check, check. I got everything I wanted. Except Torvald. I did not get my son. I will never have my son in this life. 

And reading my old thoughts, it is strange that now this is my reality. I wanted a standing up headstone then. I still want one now. We buried Torvald in the Provo Cemetery in the older pioneer part, where he will have a fully upright tombstone. This was something that was very important to me. Important enough that I felt like the first tombstone we ordered, which was the same one as the flat ones but would just be wedged upright, was not the actual stone I wanted. We went back and paid three times the price for a fully upright one, and I have less than zero regrets. A tombstone, it turns out, is basically the most permanent purchase one can buy, so it is best to go for what one really wants for it. 

I remember crying at IZ singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow." I still love that song, and I cannot listen to it now - it is too painful. I cry at just the thought of it. I cry at a lot of things now. Today I opened up my file of downloads on my computer, and there were the 3d images of Torvald just a day before he died, and I cried - gut wrenching sobs that are a whole new, unpleasant way of crying I have discovered in the last couple of months. I had no idea when that ultrasound was taken. I was so hopeful, so grateful for him. I thought I might have gestational diabetes, or that he might need a surgery after birth, but that everything would work out fine, with fine here meaning exactly the way I wanted it to. Everything did not work out fine, it did not work out the way I wanted it to. I didn't have any premonitions, after all these years and pregnancies of thinking that I or my baby might not make it. And this time I was a 100% sure he would make it. But he didn't. Torvald was never going to make it. We don't know exactly what (perhaps we will in the future), but he had some kind of genetic difficulties. He never could have lived long, even had he managed to be born alive. My baby was always slated for death.  

Sometimes I want to rage against God. It is so unfair. We love our children. We want our children. This pregnancy had been so hard, so very hard. I had promised God years ago I would have the children he wanted me to have. That has been wonderful and life-giving, but it has also been hard, the hardest thing I had ever done (and that was before Torvald died). Now, it feels like I have been betrayed, that God took my willingness further than I thought I could go. And yet I cannot rage against God. In a blessing after Torvald was stillborn, I was told that God sent us Torvald because he knew that we would love him. And we do love him. And I know deep down inside, in a place that I cannot deny, that he is a blessing to us, and not a curse or a sign that God does not favor us, but rather that we are favored by God. I know this. But it still hurts. It hurts to see others with their living babies. It hurts to see babies that also have genetic struggles, and wish my child was living like theirs is. 

My arms feel so empty. I go about my days, and I am doing pretty well. We have our seven living children to love and to feed, clothe and parent every day. I am excited about our house projects coming up this summer (gardening and landscaping and painting). I love traveling with my family to see nature, and have already lined up our two next vacations. But underneath it all I carry Torvald in my heart. With a living child they grow away from you from the moment they are born. As Dave Barry put it, they are like a comet streaking past, and you are just a small part of that. But for a stillborn baby, he was physically born, but he has never left me at the same time. For seven months I carried Torvald under my heart, and now for the rest of my life I will carry him within my heart. My other children will move away and continue their own existence without me. And I know that Torvald's spirit is in heaven. But I am the monument to his life. The only life he had on this earth was within my own body, within my own soul. 

This is the burden and the blessing of being a mother of a stillborn child. I am the only one who ever held him, who ever substantially felt him move. That is my blessing, and my curse. No one else knew him while he was alive. Very few even saw his little, broken body. To almost all others he is an abstract. But to me he was real, a real person. A person who moved and whom I loved, and still love. And I miss him so much. I miss my baby. I miss the smell of a newborn, and their sleepy milk drunk breath and heavy weight. I feel cheated to have gone through such a hard pregnancy, and such a hard post delivery (I lost a third of my blood. I would have died without modern medicine), and not to have gotten a baby out of it. Not to have gotten Torvald. 

Sometimes I will be doing something mundane and the image of his cold cheek next to mine as I held him will come to me, like an overlay over my life. I hope you never have to hold your dead child in your arms. It is almost unbearably poignant. Exquisitely painful. Because at the same time that I was mourning him, I was also trying to soak up being in his physical presence, because I knew that that day, February 11 was all I would ever have in this life with his body, and it was also the closest to his soul that I could be as well. This was all compounded by the fact that because of my blood loss and continued loss that day that I spent most of the day unable to sit up and unable to hold Torvald at all. I could not even get a whole day with him. I could have kept him over night with me - the hospital was very understanding and helpful. But they had put Torvald in a hospital bassinet that kept him cool, and by the evening when I could finally sit up and hold him again, for the first time since that morning, it was not the same. I could feel that his soul had separated from his body in a way it had not since early that morning when I had birthed him. I need to say goodbye to his body, but it was only his body left to say goodbye to. He was so very cold. 

And so I said my goodbyes. I had Avram leave the room, so I could be alone with my son. Since the morning I knew what I had to do to say goodbye. And so I sang to Torvald while holding him. I sang the lullabies I had sung to all of my children throughout their babyhoods. I sang Baby Beluga, and an Irish Lullaby, and others I cannot even remember now. I cried and I sang, because I knew that this was the only opportunity I would ever be able to do so. Like I needed to store up all my mothering and deliver it at once to him in the form of song. Avram came back and I told him what I was doing, and together we sang Hush Little Baby to him, which is a song Avram has always sung to our children. A week later I remembered a song I had often sung to my children that I had forgotten to sing to him - Mother I Love You, but with the lyrics altered to that child. So I found a moment to be alone in my bedroom and cradled to me the afghan my mother had crocheted for Torvald, and that I knew he would be wrapped in for burial and sang to him, through my tears, "Torvald I love you. Torvald I do. Father in Heaven has sent me to you. When I am near you, I love to hear you, singing so softly that you love me to. Torvald, I love you, I love you, I do." Except I will never get to in this life hear him singing that he loves me. Now I cannot sing to my children anymore. I break down in tears every time I try to sing a lullaby, like they all belong to Torvald now. Thankfully Avram can still sing to our kids.

I also, when I was alone with Torvald, carefully kissed his little feet, his hands, his cheeks, his eyes, his mouth. He was so cold, and so still. But I loved him still. I both treasured my last moments with him, and dreaded them. It was perhaps the second most painful moment of my life to have the nurses take him away (the first being when the Doctor told me they could not find his heartbeat, and showed me on the ultrasound monitor where it should be. Torvald's little body just lay there inside of me, like was was asleep, but with black stillness where his heart should have been moving.) 

Two and a half months later I feel like I spent the time I needed to with Torvald's body. But I am still bitter I was out of capacity for most of the day, that I could not spend more time with him earlier, when perhaps his spirit was more broadly present. Instead I was surrounded by medical professionals working on me. It is sobering to realize a century earlier that not only Torvald would have been dead, but that I would have died also.

But I am not dead. I am very much alive. I love this life. I love my other children, oh so much. I love Avram. I love springtime and blossoms and the feel of the sun on my face. I love breezes and flowers and pretty art and painted rooms. I love nature and beautiful old buildings and my friends and family. But underneath it all, I also love one who is not here. I have never dreaded death, but now I look forward to the day when I am reunited with my son again. Until then it has been a great comfort to me that Heavenly Mother is in heaven, and can be the mother to him that I cannot be. I am grateful we know that there is the divine feminine, and not just the divine masculine. 

There is a picture over our mantel by Brian Kershisnik titled, "Jesus and the Angry Babies." Avram and I picked it out for our anniversary last year because it always made us laugh a little, to see Jesus with a lap full of angry babies. It just feels appropriate to Jesus, somehow. One of the babies is hidden behind the others, with his head just poking out and his eyes showing over another baby's arm. Now I think of that as Torvald, that like that baby he is with Jesus, and although we cannot contact him, that Jesus is in contact with him, is taking care of him. On Torvald's twenty week scan he hid his face from us the entire time. Eve joked that he was saying, "Go away!" to us. After he died of all of our kids Eve, only four, has been the most willing to talk about Torvald, and the most openly sad he is gone. She said within a few days of him dying that now Torvald was telling us that he was going away, to be with Jesus. That is what I think of  every time I see this print - Torvald has gone away to be with Jesus. I know this. I am grateful for a Savior and for the plan of salvation. But I am also still so very sad. I did not want him to go away. I wish I could have had even one moment of holding Torvald when he was still alive. I cannot wait until the day when I can hug his resurrected body. 

Avram's remarks at Torvald's Funeral

In my job, I do a lot of speaking, and even a lot of speaking and teaching about gospel principles, but this is not a message I would have chosen for myself, not necessarily in topic, and definitely not in circumstance. I don’t really have the words to say what I feel, and I feel keenly the inadequacy of my language to fit the circumstance. 

Let me begin this with a story. When we first discovered we were pregnant, Thora and I were very excited about the possibilities, about welcoming a new individual to our family. When we announced it to the kids, I had a conversation with Enoch, our eight year old son, who asked me, “Dad are we lucky to be having another baby?” I said yes, we were very lucky, and the thing is, even with all of this, I still feel lucky. The past months have been a privilege, and I appreciate Enoch for articulating so well what I have been feeling.

There a lot of teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ that help me and aid me in my life, but right now, I am most grateful for the hope that I have in a glorious resurrection. The Prophet Joseph Smith reminds us, “The fundamental principles of our religion is the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, “that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended up into heaven”; and all other things, are only appendages to these, which pertain to our religion.” The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the subsequent doctrine of our own resurrection has been the bedrock to my faith over the past few weeks. I always believed, and hoped in the Resurrection (Easter is one of my favorite times of the year), but I never needed the Resurrection like I do now. I have been reminded of Paul’s statement to the Corinthians that “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). I have felt, in some of the hard moments since we discovered Torvald’s death, something of that misery that Paul alludes to. Facing Torvald’s death has felt like looking straight in the face Jacob’s awful monster, death and hell. 

But I have also felt the fierce joy of the Resurrection. We are not unavoidably lost. I could not countenance a world where I had no hope in seeing Torvald again, but that is not the world in which I live. I live in a world, where, through Jesus Christ, we live again after we die, and we will dwell in eternal glory. I love the observation of Neal A. Maxwell, “Christ’s victory over death ended the human predicament.” Having felt all too strongly the “human predicament”, I take great comfort and solace in Christ’s victory. We are not left alone. 

Elder Maxwell goes on to say, “Our “brightness of hope,” therefore, means that at funerals our tears are genuine, but not because of termination—rather because of interruption. Though just as wet, our tears are not of despair but are of appreciation and anticipation. Yes, for disciples, the closing of a grave is but the closing of a door which later will be flung open with rejoicing.

We say, humbly but firmly that it is the garden tomb—not life—that is empty.”

There is still a whole in my heart that aches for little Torvald, but I know that I do not need to look in this life for things to fill that hole, because Torvald is not gone forever. Like each and every one of us, Torvald is an eternal being—he existed before this earth, and he exists now, and he will still exist long after this earth is a cosmic memory. Although he died before I could get to know him as well as I liked, I look forward to the day when I will be able to know him better. I look forward to our personal return to Zion, where we can fall upon his neck, and he can fall upon ours, and we will kiss each other. (See Moses 7:63). 

In the meantime, I am grateful that my son has found the heavenly city that we are looking for. Although I am still a stranger and a pilgrim on this earth, still desiring the heavenly country that Jesus has prepared for us, I anxiously await the day when “God will dwell with [us…and shall] wipe away all tears from [our] eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, neither crying, neither shall be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4). 

Even so, Lord, come quickly! In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 

My Remarks at Torvald's Funeral

On February 11, 2021 I gave birth to our still born son, Torvald Alistair. He has some genetic difficulties that caused him to pass away. These are my remarks at his funeral on February 26th. 

This pregnancy was hard (which turned out to be because of severe polyhydramnios, caused by Torvald's genetic difficulties), and yet every day I had a mantra I often repeated to myself as I fell asleep and as I woke up: I love this baby, I want this baby. I love you. I want you. And I did. I do. Three years ago when announcing Gareth's birth on social media I commented that we were just grateful that he was born healthy. Avram and I early on in our childbearing realized that we did not really care whether we had boys or girls, which is good as, in a phrase I always tell my children, “you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.” We would just say, like many other parents, “We just want our child to be healthy.” 

In early February I went to the hospital for early labor, and became aware that Torvald might have genetic problems, but they did not seem incompatible with life. And we thought, we don't need a healthy child, we just want a living child. And then, only three days after coming home from the hospital we went back again, this time in more aggressive early labor, to learn that Torvald had already passed, and that the smaller genetic difficulties were in fact insurmountable, and even had he lasted to be born alive would have died shortly anyway. And beyond our immediate grief, grief that lasted as Torvald was born, as he was laid on me and I held my son and wept, I knew, that ultimately God does not promise us boys or girls, he does not promise us healthy children, and he does not even promise us living children. 

What we are promised is what Jesus was given in Gethsemane; a mortal experience that will test us and try us beyond what we think we can bear, but we will not be left alone, we will not be left comfortless. Christ asked “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Heavenly Father sent an angel to comfort Jesus, but notably did not remove the requirement for Christ to complete his heavenly commission to atone for all of His children. 

God did not give Torvald life, but we also have comfort. When Christ came to raise Lazarus from the dead Mary met him, and told him that if he had been there her brother would not have died. In her sorrow and grief Jesus met her, and in the shortest verse in scripture, but still full of meaning, “Jesus wept.” He wept with her even knowing that he would shortly raise her brother from the dead, and that she would be with him again. He did not mansplain this all to Mary, he did not tell her there was no need to cry because shortly she would see her brother alive. He just wept with her in her sorrow.

And I have felt the same about Torvald dying. I have felt the comfort of God comforting us, of all of your prayers carrying us in our grief, even while we know that we will be united as a family again after death, but that has not stopped us from crying and grieving that we are separate now.

Avram and I have long talked about how much we love the Church of Jesus Christ's doctrine of the plan of salvation, and not just the warm fuzzy parts, but even the hard parts that we have referred to as being a “cold comfort.” One such cold comfort is that we could not have had a true earthly, mortal experience without having a world where genetics do not always work, where we have mortal bodies that are subject to pain, disease, and death. Even through the almost overwhelming wave of pain on learning that our son had died because of these very fallen and mortal limitations, we felt the truth that this is a part of our mortal experience, and that God had not abandoned us but that he cared deeply, that we have a God who weeps with us, even while knowing that our mortal sojourn on earth is not long for any of us, even octogenarians, compared with our immortal existence. And it has been a comfort. 

Like Avram, I too have felt this great privilege of having Torvald in our lives, however briefly. But knowing that he is not in our family briefly, but forever, has been what has sustained us. Perhaps all we could offer him in the end was a flawed mortal body, but I have learned such a reverence for what an important part of our eternal progression having a mortal body is. Holding Torvald in my arms, seeing the tell-tall signs of genetics that didn't work on his face and body, I still felt at the same time such a reverence that he had a body at all. That even broken it was beautiful. We felt his spirit, and the Holy Spirit strongly in the birthing that was also his death. It is a comfort to know that our deepest sorrows and difficulties are not outside of the Spirit's reach. 

One third of the Heavenly Father's children rejected having physical bodies, rejected going through sorrow exactly like this. I cannot completely blame them – like Christ in Gethsemane I too want to retreat, want to call enough on this pain and suffering. But also like Christ, in my own much lesser way, I want to tell God, “Thy will be done.” 

I do not regret getting pregnant with Torvald, even knowing the tragedy we feel now, I know that God's will was done in sending us a son that was neither healthy nor could live. His becoming part of our family, including his death, is privilege and blessing I feel grateful and blessed to be called to bear. As a mother when I have carried my children I have seen myself as their protector, ushering them to their earthly existence in the only way possible for them to gain a physical body, for them to progress eternally from spirits to living mortals and eventually to eternal glory. But ultimately it is the Lord's position beyond mine to protect and usher our spirits, and I must rely on Him when what seems like the most fundamental of mothering actions does not have the outcome I have worked so hard for. Even though God's will takes us through our own Gethsemanes, Christ has redeemed all for us, and turned our sorrows to sweetness, our ashes to beauty. 

I miss Torvald, even having known him so little compared to the length of my life. I look forward to reuniting with him, and to the resurrection when we will all be made whole again, and when he can have a physical body that will fully function for his spirit. Until then, I am grateful for a loving godhead and a Heavenly Mother that can be with him, and love him in person in ways that I cannot. I am grateful for the Plan of Salvation that teaches me why hard things happen to us, that gives me comfort, even hard comfort, and helps me know that we can be together forever and that our earthly life is short, but our heavenly home is eternal.

Two weeks ago (so I'm a little slow) Elisheva Anne turned one year old. I know every mother says this, but I can hardly believe it's been a whole year since she joined our family. In her short life Elisheva has lived in a foreign country, England, and in Virginia and Ohio. How many month old babies do you know that have a passport? Not that she'll be using it ever again, probably.

Elisheva had a quick and easy (for her) entry into the world on April 28, eleven days early. Elisheva has been a mother's dream as a baby. She sleeps well, and started sleeping completely through the night at 7 1/2 months. She also takes naps, and actually lets you just put her in her crib when she's tired (although sometimes she'll fuss if she thinks she should be able to stay up and play).

For the first few months of her life Elisheva was a lump of a baby, which was her affectionate nickname. She wasn't very interactive, and was content to sit and to eat. Eating has always been Elisheva's number one hobby. I appreciated that she was a low-need baby, as we moved from England to Virginia when she was six weeks old, and then when she was four months old we moved from Virginia to Ohio.

The day we moved to Ohio Elisheva must have realized that we were settling down and she could progress past the lumpy stage, because she rolled over that very day. Unlike her sister Lydia, who learned to roll at four months and spent the next several months rolling all over the whole house, Elisheva could never quite figure out how to completely roll over, so she remained immoble.

This, along with her love of milk, led her to grow to 20 pounds by six months. Six months later, she still hovers around 20 pounds, and is losing her copious baby fat. For a while, though, Elisheva was quite the chunkers. Which led to her next nickname - Chunker Monkers (based on Chunky Monkey). We also called her Chubbery Bubbery (from Chubby Baby). Good thing Elisheva was not sensitive about her weight!