I have been thinking about this lately and honestly, I cannot remember if I had documented all the freaky stuff that happened around the time of his death.
Back on my mission, I worked my tail off and was pondering/praying/reading my patriarchal blessing one time and the Lord affirmed to me that my mission sacrifice was accepted of Him. I did not baptize thousands, but we worked hard and had amazing experiences down there. Some of the fruit is so very sweet to me (and my companions). When you have children or people you baptize turn their lives around or make a success of the chances they were given in life, it brings true and everlasting joy. I am sure the kind that Father and our Elder Brother, Jesus enjoy continually in their stations.
I was given two promises or blessings as a result of my work in the mission. One, that I would be able to see/visit every temple of the earth. Being the guy that I am, I pictured wealth enough to visit every building as they were dedicated. Sadly, the only one I purpose-spent money on to see dedicated was the Nauvoo Temple - the announcement of that one just simply thrilled me to the core, so we had to see it as soon as it was done. The night I booked tix for the family to fly out there and discussed with my sweetie whether we would have to take our youngest son on our lap or book an extra ticket for the car seat, our child died. After I returned to the home office to click the "go button" as my wife finished nursing him, I returned and put him down since my wife was exhausted and had dozed off. He was gone about three hours later after we retired for the night.
The second thing I had - that I might not call a blessing - so much as I might call it a warning, was that I might not live to be an old man - that my work might be furthered on the other side of the veil before I had aged naturally. That I might die early. That troubled me a little and left enough of an impression on me that around the time that my wife and I were becoming emotionally intimate and sharing our deepest emotions/fears/hopes, etc as we prepared to become engaged and move towards marriage, I remember she had shared the tale of her abuse at the hands of her step-dad. Around that time, I shared my impression that I might not live to be an old man. Normally, that might not be such a big deal for many people, but she knew the struggle her mother had gone thru losing her biological father in Vietnam - which led (in part) to the abuse at the hands of her step-dad. In talking about it, my wife was okay with the possibility of losing me - but that she would not re-marry due to the experience of her step-dad. Therefore, her expectation was that (should something happen to me) she would live out a life of solitude if I were not there to help her raise the kids. I believe she asked how old I thought I would be when it happened. I did not give it much thought, but I believe I told her in my 30's or 40's. When you are young/feeling invincible and in love, none of that stuff matters, right??
We married the end of our 23rd year. I cannot remember how the conversation came up, but we talked about my impression again before I hit 30. We are born 15 hours apart. Same year - we are the same age. I love when people see our IDs at the same time and make the connection. Most cannot believe it. This is significant because I was 16 or 17 and was madly in love with a girl in high school. Her birthday is Sept 13th. Mine is the 23rd of Sept (both interesting dates this year). I knew that she, not being LDS and her parents against anything I believe because of my religion, would not have it. I knew I had to give up the hope that she would join so we could be sealed - it would take anything short of a miracle for that to happen. So, I continued on my path - but asked who it would be if not that one that first yanked my heart strings til I thought I would die without her (one who would qualify for the temple blessings) and was told to look for someone else also born in the month of September. I guess I was kind of a serious 16 year old kid...... I knew I had search the one out - and I was always on the look out for September babes. To the point that I would often ask girls within a short time of knowing them if they were September girls. So, one year after I returned from my mission at BYU, I was out foraging for food at the womens' apartments on a Sunday afternoon with my engineering buddy and later best man. He was an extrovert extraordinaire and seemed to know every kid on campus. I was a little more reserved - but out for a good time and maybe some leftovers after a Sunday meal. He introduced me to several girls at this one apt near campus and the conversation came up over birthdays. My best man and I were born on the same day of the same year and were born 70 miles apart. One of those girls was born 3500 miles away, but only 15 hours apart from my birth time. There was one other girl there with a Sept b-day, but I did not click with her like I did this cute blonde girl. I was almost strictly exclusively a brunette guy prior to my mission and would only go out with blondes on courtesy dates, but had somehow gravitated towards blondes exclusively after my mission. I fought it hard - but always struck out with the brunettes and seemed to hit it off with the blondes..... Path of least resistance - and I had no experience to know whether blondes actually DID have more fun or not - simply did not play into the equation.....
A few weeks after our chance meeting, my wife to be asked me out to a girl ask guy formal and we went and had a great time. I was on my mission when Saturday's Warrior came out, but I remember dancing in the box the SL Temple came in and talking about our birthdays again and saying something to the effect that we had both left the pre-existence at the same time and promised to meet up down here. My wife to be was a big Saturday's Warrior fan and liked that idea a lot. I finally watched it for the first time around 2008 and it is a favorite with my two youngest girls. We snuggle up and sing the cheesy songs together while watching it.
So, fast forward to a conversation we had around our 30th birthday. We went out for our usual alternating birthday date night and the topic of aging and death came up and my wife asked me about my statement again. This time, I guess I was feeling like I really was going over the hill, so I took her seriously and told her I would ask the Lord and get back to her in a few weeks on the date that He had in mind for my demise. Morbid, eh? True story. I prayed about and pondered on it and came back a few weeks later with "The middle of my 33rd year, about the age that Jesus was when he died." It seemed kind of vague at the time - but that was the best that I could give her. At that point, I was not too serious about life, had no blog, was mostly dead asleep to most things, but might have considered myself a run of the mill member of the Church with a TR and a steady calling. At the time we had two kids.
Time moved along and we never thought about it or talked about it much more. I had never had these inklings that turned into anything before - so mostly, I think my wife took it with a grain of salt (and so did I). If I knew what I knew now, I would have kind of been on pins and needles.....over a strong prescience that it was my time to pass over. How it would happen? Was I ready to meet my Lord? What would my family do without me? Those kinds of things would have really started to eat away at me. I am a worrier, by nature - even when I know it will be just fine. I obsess over details leading up to something - but mostly enjoy the ride once there is nothing more that can be done and the "rocket is launched".
When we were 32, we had our third kid and bringing him home, as I hauled him thru the front door in his car seat, I had a feeling come over me that he was the best thing to cross our threshold. His looks were always to wise and there was a spirit about him - the same kind you get when looking into the eyes of your Patriarch or a really good Stake President. He had a countenance like no other and simply seemed like an adult stuck an a baby's body. I truly bonded with, and loved, that kid! When he was a few weeks old, I was called into the Elder's Quorum Presidency and set apart one evening. After coming home, with the Spirit of the Lord and revelation still resting on me, I prophesied to my wife after walking in the door, that "something big is going to happen, its going to affect my employment (aerospace engineer), and it will happen in the next six months". Those words exactly. My wife asked, "What should we do about it?" This time - I already knew the answer: "We need to double our fast offerings and pay our tithing religiously (every single paycheck - not the end of the month or the quarter), and we will probably be okay". Well six weeks later on 9/11, all hell broke loose in my company when the planes crashed and they cut our head count down from 106,000 to 54,000. Anyone with less than 20 years with the company was on the chopping block and they started aggressively making cuts. I felt doomed - I had been there four years and had just left my position in Flight Test to join another group that had already been making cuts of contract labor. I was on the block for first cuts as the newbie. I went into drastic mode and prepared to move to MT to build on our acreage there (previous article on prompting to move there - and then eventually to Cardston before a big EQ hit to break up the roads and cause chaos). Yep - we had filled in that little detail back around '98 or '99 - but had ZERO context to put it in. Just that, if we lived in Western Montana, that we would have to cross the Rockies to join the Saints in Cardston on foot (due to broken roads).
So, one night in November, I am at a HT visit with an inactive brother who works at SEATAC as a line mechanic. He tells me that its not a matter of IF, Alaska has a crash, it is a matter of WHEN. I couldn't believe it could be that bad. Well, FFWD to Feb of 2002, driving home from work and hear a B_____ product has crashed off the coast of California due to failure of my system in Flight Controls. I was freaked out the next couple of days - people were going out the door with pink slips and my friend and I in the group figured we had less than two weeks before the next round took us out of the picture. Suddenly, I am being ushered into my manager's office because the FAA says there will be no one from that system leaving our company. All were tasked with a complete analysis and re-design of the systems from top to bottom. I have stories that would make your skin crawl - but we were saved. I actually got a $5K raise that day and a engineering level increase because it was against the rules to keep any Level II engineers. Here I was convinced I was getting the boot as I was being ushered into the manager's office - and then this. Talk about SHOCK!
Being so distracted with all of the work shennanigans and everything else, I had completely forgotten about the approaching middle of my 33rd year and that the day of Easter was approaching. Actually, I had no working idea of all of those festivals. Heck, our kid played the baby Jesus the previous December in the Ward play and I was disconnected with any of that stuff at the time. One thing I did have going in my favor was that a good brother in our ward asked me to take his weekly Saturday morning temple assignment as he was going to be away on company business for a month, or so. I started in February and just kept going every week. It helped my spirituality - at a time I would sorely need it.
So, about the middle of my 33rd year (191 days in), I awoke in the middle of the night, three nights after Easter Sunday and had a most profound dream wherein I recorded to the detail of what would happen in three distinct phases. The first one a good-bye message from our son: "Don't blame yourself. It was my time to go. It was supposed to happen this way." The feeling that was there in our bedroom as I recorded this dream (three hours after they said he had passed) was beyond anything I have ever felt in this life, including the Temple. That kind of love is only felt in the realms beyond this one - and I know why Joseph Smith said if we only knew how good it was over there, we would do whatever it took to get there and partake." I testify that he was right. For many weeks after our loss, the only thing that kept me here was knowing that I would not be able to partake of that love if agency were ever forced in the process of trying to get there.....
We all awoke late - he was the family alarm clock - I never set a clock while he was alive. His cries always woke mom for the morning nursing and then we would play with him in our bed and then all get up and have breakfast together with Dad then going off to work. Perfect contentment - shattered that morning. Shock waves through our lives that we still struggle with to this day in the form of my wife's health and other things. So affirming that God is in control and that our days are numbered no more, nor any less - yet so bloody destructive to our peace and earthly contentment. I honestly thought that nothing could be closer to perfect than our lives at that time. SUCH a struggle since then. With the shock waves it sent out - I have said - and I mean every word of it - I would rather go through the pain of that five times over (than to deal with some of the effects it has had on my wife) and our family by virtue of that. I am a fan of seeing others who have chosen (pre-mortally) other paths down which they travel and to suffer and to gain mortal experience and wisdom, and then thank the Lord that I had never been called (or had chosen) to go down such hard paths. I have learned to NEVER complain. Because - YEP - it can ALWAYS get worse.....
Well - what happened to my prediction that I would die - and not my son? I got to experience - to a degree, what Father went through, I suppose. Our little guy played the baby Jesus in the previous Ward Christmas party. He died in the middle of my 33rd year on the EXACT day that Jesus died on 33AD - yep, I ran it back on a Jewish Feast calendar and it was spot on.
So why him and not me? I cannot remember if I shared this on the blog, or not - but this has turned into the journal hour - so here we go. About two weeks before his death, my dad, myself and our baby boy were all deathly sick with respiratory issues. My dad had shingles on the linings of the lungs and had been to the emergency room three times to try and get relief. I have seen step on a rusty nail and drive almost through his foot and he would just tough it out after patching it up. My dad is old school tough. I was always amazed at him as a kid. He would just suck it up and keep on going. To hear that he had admitted himself three times to the E-room kind of had me freaked out. He has died three times and all three times was sent back by his g-pa who was the Stake Patriarch of the Cedar City Stake up until 1930 when he died from respiratory issues. My dad's longest passing was about 10 mins due to a pulmonary embolism. He was told to go back and marry and raise a family. So, this Patriarch appeared to my dad in a dream, two weeks before our son died and said that he needed help on the other side directing affairs over there. My dad said I was there, a fellow that looked about like I did when I was 25 - but a little taller and broader in the shoulder - and he was there. My dad said I was first asked a series of questions about my life and what I still had to accomplish - I gave my answers and was asked to leave the room. My father said he was asked similar questions, gave his answers and said that he was asked to leave the room. The last one standing there, my dad said he assumed was my son (this story was related to our family as we were gathered at the burial site before we dedicated the grave).
My wife was also given a premonition about two weeks before the death while she was pondering in the shower. She said she felt there would be a death in the family and asked that it not be her husband (though she did not think of the middle of the 33rd year statement, at the time), then her thoughts focused on the oldest two children who are very tight even to this day and she asked that it not be one of them - they could not bear to be alone and then she focused on the baby. Her next thought was, if it was going to be him, that it not be her fault (due to leaving him in the car on a hot day, car wreck due to her inattention or him choking on a lego, that sort of thing). Of the almost 200 days he was with us, I may have put him down just a hand full of times. That night was one of them due to her being so exhausted. Usually, she just nursed him and unlatched him and put him into the crib. He would sleep like a baby that way - but would wake up or not go down if he did not just have his tummy filled with milk - due to a cast/fixture he had to wear to fix a twisted ankle after he was born. So, I got tapped for the "duty" - to keep my wife from having to blame herself. I could have blamed myself or been hard on myself - but I was given the beauty of that dream to latch onto and bring peace to my soul on that matter.
Anyway - the short of it. My wife got to choose that it not be me. Sometimes, I maintain it was the wrong choice that she made - but the Lord honors agency more than we can imagine. What we do DOES matter. It is not just chance and coincidence. EVERYTHING happens for a reason. Much of it - just playing out agreements and covenants made in the pre-existence. Much of what we have in life is also just dealing with consequences (good and bad), of our choices in the is life.
So, I guess this 777 thing kind of brought all of that back to my memory and I felt the need to record it. And also to remember that, when this is all over whatever happens on the 13th of Sept (29th of Elul) and the 23rd of Sept and then for the next 13 months - that God is in control, first and foremost. And, that it will happen as given. I have missed some things like the timing of the nuke in Ogden (which WILL happen EXACTLY as I saw it - just not sure when) and the significance of Elenin, but these other things have restored my confidence of what I have seen and felt when it comes to the economic crash and the events afterwards (martial law, rioting. looting, rape, social collapse). I have seen nothing of tent cities (but know for sure, they will come about - just as many have seen in their paths to preparation).
There is much that I cannot share - but know that I know that God lives and He has a plan for each one of us. I have shared part of my journey with Him in hopes that it will inspire others to journey down their own special and unique paths towards Him and millennial bliss with loved ones. May God bless all of us to this end in Jesus name, amen.
