With the recent passing of Marjorie Pay Hinckley, a beloved mother and grandmother, many gathered at her funeral to pay tribute and express love. More than one speaker remembered her gentle way, her sense of humor, her cheerfulness, and most of all, her love.
No one remarked on the kind of car she drove or the places she traveled. Instead they remembered how she spent time doing the things that mothers often do. She read to her children. She gardened and taught her children to do their chores. She sometimes drove her boys on their paper routes. She was always willing to help those outside her family too. When a neighbor boy, now grown, needed a ride, she would get her pillow to put on the car seat (because she was too short to see over the steering wheel), put on her glasses, and drive him and her son to wherever they needed to go.1
At her funeral, no one spoke about the kind of clothes she wore. But years before her daughter recalled how secure she felt when her mother walked in the room for a school program: “No foofy hair or spiked heels, not very young or very beautiful, dressed in her typically tidy housedress. There was a warm, comfortable feeling and the thought clear as neon: ‘Oh, I’m so glad that my mother looks like a real mother.’ ”2
No one talked about the kind of house she lived in, whether it was large or small, richly decorated or simply adorned. But they all remembered how good they felt there, how the screen door slammed shut all summer long when her children and their friends found refuge in her kitchen, how they felt better after being with her, how they laughed together, how she listened to them and made them feel welcome. “She wept each fall when it was time to send her brood back to school.”3
This same woman once cautioned those who might try too hard to be the perfect mother: “Relax. There is no such thing as the perfect mother who fits all the eulogies. We just do the best we can with the help of the Lord.”4
When it came time to say good-bye to this good woman, all remembered the love she freely gave. Maybe one or two thought of the favorite adage: “A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different, because I was important in the life of a [child].”
This day and always, we thank the Lord for mothers who, like Marjorie Hinckley, play such an important role in the lives of their children.
Program #3899
1. Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley, Virginia Pearce, editor, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 19999, 69
2. Glimpses, 49–50
3., Glimpses, 53
4. Glimpses, 61
5. Forest Witcraft, “Within My Power,” Scouting, Oct. 1950, 2.