The Stories About Sister Kathleen Eyring She Didn’t Want Anyone To Hear Sister Kathleen Johnson Eyring practiced what the scriptures preach. Her children said at her funeral on Saturday that it wasn’t easy for them to talk about her life because most of what she did they didn’t see. And if they didn’t see it, she didn’t share it with them. “It’s very important to know that she would not like this conversation,” her oldest child, Henry J. Eyring, the former president of BYU-Idaho, told me last week. “She would never, ever want to risk any shred of pride,” he said. Sister Eyring’s death on Oct. 15, after suffering from memory loss, provided her own children an expanded window into her goodness, as friends came forward with stories about her. Another son, John Eyring, and one of her daughters, Mary Eyring, stood at the pulpit together on Saturday and shared some of what the children had learned in recent days. I wrote extensively about the funeral for the Deseret News on Saturday, but this newsletter is a good way to highlight her unseen service and its lessons. “The Lord said, ‘Do not your alms before men,’ and the best people don’t,” John Eyring said at the funeral, quoting a 1991 talk given at BYU by his father, President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency. “They do good very privately. Now and then, we get a glimpse of the way some people live the gospel of Jesus Christ.” “As you have mourned with us,” Mary Eyring said. “we have loved hearing your stories of mother’s acts of kindness and faith. We are glimpsing what one of the best people we have ever known was doing when we weren’t watching.” The children knew such stories existed because a woman once picked up Henry J. as he was walking home from middle school and gave him a ride home to return the service his mother gave to her family. It was the least she could do, she said. “She was a single mother with an autistic teenage son,” Mary Eyring reported at the funeral. “She wept as she described mother’s kindness to her son. Mother regularly spent time with him in the afternoons before his own mother got home from work. None of us had any idea our mother was providing this care. This woman said to Henry, ‘Your mother is a ministering angel.’” Henry J. remembered more: “You don’t know what it means, what your mother has done for so many people — the downtrodden, the outcast,” the woman said. The children only recently learned about another woman their mother visited often while they were at school. This young woman had trouble leaving her house, which abutted a golf course. She sometimes even struggled to get out of bed. “Her husband remembers mom as his wife’s one friend during those difficult times,” Mary said. More than once, Sister Eyring, who loved sports, showed up at the woman’s door with golf clubs and invited her to go play. The children started to realize the magnitude of what Sister Eyring had been up to while they were kids when a daughter-in-law became her visiting teaching (now ministering) companion. “Monthly visits turned into weekly, three times weekly and sometimes daily, with multiple companions, and lines blurring between who was serving,” Mary said. Henry J. said their mother was laser-focused on service before her she started to have issues with her memory. “Then she became more focused because she knew she was not tracking,” he said. “That was a tough, tough thing.” John said that once Sister Eyring no longer could make visits, “the bread she had cast upon the water over the years returned to her manyfold, as many of you became faithful ministers to her.” “Mom didn’t want her left hand to know what her right hand was doing,” Mary said. “And she wouldn’t have been thrilled at having these stories shared widely.” Her purpose was to follow Jesus Christ and live a Christ-like life. “The spiritual truths she shared abundantly with our family, she wanted shouted from the rooftops.” |