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It was just days before Thanksgiving when I received the kind of phone call nobody wants: Mom has had a stroke. We’re at the ER. A hundred thoughts coursed through my mind as I scrambled for my purse and jacket and ran out the door. The gas tank warning light flashed on my dashboard as I drove toward the freeway. Impatiently, I pulled into the nearest filling station, my hand shaking as I tried to insert my credit card at the pump.

Finally arriving at the hospital, I found my three brothers. One of them stood at the head of Mom’s bed, silently weeping, and I knew things were serious. Mom couldn’t speak; her right side was completely paralyzed. It seemed that we might lose her, just sixteen months after Dad passed away.

The doctors and nurses stabilized her condition, and tests were run to determine the extent of the damage caused by the stroke. Once Mom was moved to a private room, my brothers and I took turns staying with her. Later that evening, I scooted a reclining chair near her bed and settled in for the night. My mind was swirling. It was clear by that point that Mom’s life was not at risk. However, there were new concerns: What would her life look like going forward? Could she regain her speech? Would she ever walk again?

On Sunday morning, two stressful days after the stroke, a service missionary couple tapped on the door of the hospital room, asking if they could provide the Sacrament for us. Mom nodded a firm yes, and the ordinance was reverently administered.

As we partook of the bread and water, I saw tears in my mother’s hazel eyes, and heard her slow exhale of breath as she released some of the tension of the previous few days. Together, we experienced a moment of deep thanksgiving. We felt gratitude for our Savior, and the sacred assurance that we were not alone despite the uncertain future.

Though she would still be in the hospital on Thanksgiving Day, Mom insisted we press forward with our previous plan to celebrate the holiday at her home. I stood in her kitchen that Thursday morning, surveying the tables which had been pushed together to accommodate a crowd. I confess to a few moments of melancholy, standing there in my parents’ home where decades of family memories had been made, knowing neither of them would be physically present that day.

Yet, as family members trickled in, chatting and laughing and bearing food offerings for the feast, I found great comfort in our holiday traditions. Many years earlier, Mom had requested that our family sing the hymn “Prayer of Thanksgiving”1 before we prayed over the meal. That simple tradition continues to the present day.

As we sat together for the feast, heaping our plates with turkey and stuffing and rolls, I was filled with the impression that as part of my parents’ posterity, we were “links in a living chain,”2 and my parents would live on in their children and grandchildren through the traditions of service, music, and gospel priorities they had passed down. I felt a moment of deep Thanksgiving that not even death could rob me of my mother and father, because Jesus Christ “gained the victory over the grave.” (Mormon 7:5)

As I write this, I’m recalling the words of a dear friend whose elderly father was killed in a sudden, traumatic accident. A day after the tragedy, Melanie wrote:

“The man I loved and admired most in the world died early yesterday morning in a fiery explosion. Until a few hours ago it didn’t seem real. Now I’m feeling the loss completely. He was genuine and kind. Whenever I went home… and my eyes met his, I felt peace and security and safety. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to us. We are okay.”

I was so moved that my friend could write those last three words under the circumstances: “We are okay.” How is it possible to be okay when we lose someone dear to us? When painful and unexpected events change the course of our lives and interrupt our plans? Yet, with Jesus Christ as central focus of the Plan of Salvation, somehow it is possible. His glorious Atonement makes it so. I felt that truth powerfully as I attended the funeral of Melanie’s good father and heard strong declarations of faith from the family.

Elder David A. Bednar taught this comforting doctrine, “… There is no physical pain, no anguish of soul, no suffering of spirit, no infirmity or weakness that you or I ever experience during our mortal journey that the Savior did not experience first. You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out, ‘No one understands. No one knows.’ No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy in so many phases of our life.”3

On Thanksgiving Day of 2019, I could not foresee that my family would still be blessed with Mom’s presence five years later, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving 2024. No one can predict what lies ahead. But gratefully, we can look to Jesus Christ, trusting that whatever our future holds, ultimately we will be okay. Surely, that truth deserves a moment of deep Thanksgiving.

Notes:

  1. Text:, The Netherlands, ca. 1626; trans. by Theodore Baker, Music:Anon., The Netherlands, ca. 1625; arr. by Edward Kremser. Prayer of Thanksgiving, Hymns, 1985.
  2. Steven Kapp Perry, The Way of Things, from Polly: A One Woman Musical.
  3. David A. Bednar, Strength Beyond Our Own, New Era, March 2015.