I miss you Mom!

Rose Manookian Bouza
July 21, 1926-May 3, 1986

"IT IS SAD TO DO THINGS FOR THE LAST TIME"
Richard L. Evans

There was a wistful note in the voice that said it: "It is sad to do things for the last time." Certainly it is sad to do good and pleasant things for the last time. It is sad to part from beloved people for the last time, to part from useful tasks we have become accustomed to, to look for the last time upon the face of a friend, to leave behind beautiful and lovely scenes, to leave behind any cherished part of life. It is sad to see the present move into the past. But here and now, this is how life is lived. It moves one way; it moves forever forward; it will not wait; there is none of it that we can hold to, none that we can rerun. We must move as time moves-from the present to the future. But we pause a moment for searching, for reflection, for appraisal, a moment for seeing ourselves and our surroundings. In his long, lengthening days, Winston Churchill was asked if he would like to live his life over, to which he replied "Happy, vivid and full of interest as it has been, I do not seek to tread again the toilsome and dangerous path. Not even an opportunity of making a different set of mistakes and experiencing a different series of adventures and successes would lure me..." He seemed not so sure that he might do so well the second time as he did the first time through, nor could any of us be certain. We sometimes think we would, but we do not always do better, not even when we know better. In any case, we may well be grateful we have arrived as well as we have, and grateful for hope and faith and assurance for the future-assurance of an eternal plan and purpose that we can count on. No hour returns, no day, no year. But we have reason to be grateful that truth and intelligence, that memory and people are perpetuated in our Father's plan and purpose. "I desire no future, " said George Eliot, "that will break the ties of the past." Thank God for this assurance: that families and friends, that life and loved ones are everlasting; that we need not look for the last time on that which matters most. And as we look both ways at once, gratefully we recall this grateful utterance: "There is a Future, O thank God!"

"The Spoken Word," from Temple Square
December 26, 1965