What I loved about the Memorial Service


Do you remember the movie from the 1980s called Land Before Time?
Do you remember the beautiful song from that movie: "If We Hold On Together"?

Blayne Thomas' daughter in law wrote her own words to that same music, explaining here:

The original music:


I don't want to forget these special thoughts from Blayne Thomas' service.
 I also want to share them with those who were not able to attend yesterday.

*Growing up, Blayne was especially close to his loving and devoted mother.
It was a very tough blow for him when she died when he was only 17.

*Because his Dad was in the military, they moved every year of his schooling K-12.
This was very hard on him leaving friends each year,
 and it was also hard making new friends.
He feels this contributed to his shyness as an adult.
So he took the Dale Carnegie classes and he felt they helped him tremendously.

*He taught his children that it was very important to grow up well rounded.
He compared it to sitting on a 3 legged stool, and if one of the legs was missing or too short,
 a person would sit funny all of their life.

*In 1962 he joined the LDS church.
He said next to marrying his wife and being a father,
joining the church changed his life the very most.

*His son noted that as good as Blayne was in public,
he was even a better in his private life.

*Blayne thought life and everything in it was an incredible blessing.

*His children use to wait outside their home on the curb each day
 for him to come home from work.
His greeting included swinging each child around.
He was the most popular Dad on the block.

*His son remembers one April 15th when his Dad was very busy doing his taxes
with papers all over the kitchen table.
This son came in and said he wanted to talk to him.
He remembers his Dad putting down his pen and saying,
"What would you like to talk about?" His Dad made him feel very important.

*Blayne knew the day would come when he would lie his body down
and then kneel before the Savior and give an account of how he spent his life.

*The last call his daughter remembers him making was about a month before he died.
He called the missionary who baptized him 50 years ago to thank him, one more time.

*There was nothing he loved more than being a husband and father.

*He adored his wife and he was very affectionate with her.
Sometimes she would have to push him out the door to go to work
 and she would say, "For better or worse, but not for lunch."

*He could call his wife each day when he was about 10 minutes from home.
Then she would go put lipstick on and get ready for his arrival.
Once their daughter Becky said to him, "Mom, why do you bother to put your lipstick on?
You could have spaghetti all over your face and Dad wouldn't care."
She responded, "I don't care. He's my man."

*One day he took his golf clubs out, and his youngest child said she had never seen those before
and she asked him, "Dad, when did you learn to golf?"
He said, "Oh I use to golf all the time. I just had to take time off to raise 3 little children."

*He was raised a Christian Scientist, and at the age of 30
he brought all the wonderful qualities of that religion
with him into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
His entire focus became to serve God and to serve one another.

*The month before he died he studied Preach My Gospel
so he would be ready to teach in the spirit world.
He was ready to go, he was ready to meet his maker.
He died with a great peace in his heart.
He looked forward to his passing with every fiber in his being.
He knew where he came from. He knew why he was here.
And he knew where he was going.

*He simply followed the example of Christ and died with great peace.

7 comments:

Richard said...

Thank you so much for the recap. We served in a YSA Ward with Blayne 30 years ago and have been close friends since...there was so much good about Blayne and there will forever be!

threelittlebackseatdrivers.blogspot.com said...

The golfing comment, hit home, I loved it so much I copied and pasted it to Luke...he could use that explanation these days. :)

Susan Rozier said...

Thank you so much Jill for this excellent account of Blayne's Memorial Service. You caught the very essence of the spirit there. We so appreciate your talent. Love, Dad and Susan

Anonymous said...

Wow! What a man!
darlene

Anonymous said...

Hi Jill,
I remember 2 things that were not mentioned at the service. Did you know that Blayne rode his bicycle from Oregon to Mexico one time and the other is that his family slept on the roof of their home one summer. There was an article in the Fresno Bee about that. He was certainly and adventurer.
Dad
Dad

Susan Anderson said...

Thanks for sharing all of this with us, Jill. It was so touching. I especially love that he read Preach the Gospel before he died so he'd be ready.

And that he called the missionary who baptized him to say thank-you one more time.

Love the lyrics, too. It means so much at a funeral when music can be personalized like that.

=)

Lisa said...

WOW. DId you know him personally? Did you write that whole post yourself? I would love to copy & paste it in my blog but don't know how. Maybe you can teach me? Thanks again for another "gem" PS: I didn't understand the post before this one. I can't see the image.

Jill...you know if you ever wanted to go to Seattle, Jacki & Ben would love to have you & they would take GOOD care of you & the place is CLEAN. : )

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