Edna Marie Lovett Hunlow Peterson
Carl was a good man who Mother married several years after my father passed away. There were perhaps only ten years of generally good memories for Mother and Carl, before his slow but constant decline into the Alzheimer's vortex. Then over the next fifteen years the Carl Mother married gradually disappeared.
Carl, even from the beginning, was never a man who would be described as affectionate or romantic. A more typical impression would have been "crusty". Some of the older kids in the neighborhood were afraid of him because of his stern expression and laconic nature. Mother, on the other hand, possessed that rare vision that is portrayed in the famous 1880 story of "Heidi" by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. Mother has always had a way of seeing more in a person than others can, a bias I have personally benefited from also. Of Carl she said "My Carl may be very different than the one others knew. I've heard him described as aloof, distant, and even unfriendly. There have been times I've seen glimpses of that person, but for those whom he let be close, they saw a softer side — a man with the heart of a pussy cat, a caring side disguised by crustiness..." Still, it wasn't as if she did not want to be esteemed in a more demonstrative way. There was a passage from one of her journals that read: "I regret that Carl could not say "I love you". Then in the next sentence she demonstrates her commitment to focus away from what she would have wanted to what he could give: "I had to hear it in other ways. It was there, if one took the time to look, to know, to feel." What if in every marriage both partners could be that nobly unselfish? If all parents modeled and our laws required this uncommon perspective, our social landscape would be much different than it is. Mother took the time to look, to know and to feel. She and Carl went on numerous trips to the wilderness areas of Utah and cemented many fond memories while Carl's health was good. They spent time together and yet gave each other space to be themselves.
That period lasted only ten years — less than half of their entire married life. Courage is frequently manifest through some heroic epic whose beginning and end are confined to a relatively short point in time. Mother's courage is seen through a different fight one that required re-dedication to ideals day after day after day — each day it's own decision, each day requiring reaffirmation of what matters most. It is the battle to endure to the end. Mother taught us that we must turn to our God for this kind of strength. She gave us that example. The memory of the Carl she knew had to last her for the next fifteen years as that person slowly faded from reality.
Fifteen years is a long time to remain true under unfavorable circumstances. That observation does not nearly begin to describe the challenge of endurance. In 1992, seven years before Carl died, she recorded "I'm never sure with this disease, Alzheimer's, just where he is mentally. I feel like a football player running zig-zag down the field not knowing where the tackle will come from...I wonder if I will be able to endure to the end...in a manner I can be proud of. I wonder. If there is love, I'm sure I can. It is when the "frost bites" that I wonder." And the frost bit more and more frequently. Losing control of his memory, Carl would strike out at Mother with words like "you are playing God, why don't you go back where you came from?" While such words always hurt, Mother chose to remember a comment that Carl had made while on the edge of the disease "I am sorry for who I will become." It was not Carl who was rude, it was the Alzheimer's. When the time finally came where her strength was not sufficient to take care of him, she found the best facility she could for him and then visited him every single day. It did not matter that some days he had no idea who she was and some days he was very insulting. Yet the story that she focused on and built her courage around was a short moment when Carl, ignorant of the fact that Mother was his wife, did remembered that she had been kind to him and asked her if she would marry him. Carl died in July of 1999. Mother did endure to the end and recorded in her journal "He was my knight in shining armor, my dragon slayer, a shining light in our home. I will remember him that way" Mother has earned a place on the "Walk of the Heroines". Lovingly, your son Rick.