Eternally Grateful, Part III

I tried to find a verse in scripture that typified the life of my son, Benjy. There were many, but I found one that seemed to fit best. In Mosiah 2:17 we read, “I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow being, ye are only in the service of your God.”

In August 1972, the Allen and Everts families visited the Lagoon amusement park here in Davis County. My parents, brothers and sister, son Jay and nephew Jeremy all enjoyed the day, despite the summer heat. That is, until about mid-afternoon when my wife, Vickie, who was expecting our second child, was exposed to an unknown allergen—an insect bite or something she ate—which set off a rapid anaphylactic reaction. She quickly went into shock, with signs indicating she was not receiving enough oxygen.

It would be well over an hour before Vickie arrived at the emergency room. Rapid treatment by the medical staff quickly reversed the life-threatening process, and all appeared to be well; however, there was no way to know if the oxygen deprivation had hurt our unborn baby.

So it was that when our second son was born in early 1973 we rejoiced that he was very clearly a healthy, perfectly formed baby.

From the very earliest days of his life, Benjy was treasured and loved. He was a good baby, and later as a toddler got along exceptionally well with his big brother, Jay. Of those early months and years, the enduring impression of Benjy is his beautiful smile, which fit well with his happy and loving disposition. As with every child, Benjy was a precious gift of incalculable value, bestowed upon us by a truly loving Heavenly Father.

Even at this young age, Benjy’s warm personality and outgoing cheerfulness were making positive impressions on the world. At one point during Benjy’s pre-school years, he was part of a parenting class at the local high school. On certain days, he would spend the morning in the care of teen-age parents-in-training, who without any effort to hide the fact, would compete for the chance to have Benjy assigned exclusively to them.

Later, as the family grew larger, Benjy learned to share unhesitatingly with his brother and younger sisters. When time permitted, all four children would form a circle on the living room floor, a tape recorder in the circle’s center. They would play, with their emcee father, something slightly resembling a TV quiz show, in which specially selected questions were asked by dad and answered by the kids. Even Benjy's sister Fiauna, at the time less than two years old, was given credit for her “occasionally” inaccurate answers. Oldest child Jay, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why his generally accurate responses were sometimes overruled as “too particular” by the invisible “panel of judges.” Though Jay has yet to forgive me, it was just my way of keeping the competition close. Through it all, Benjy played well and never complained about the outcome, even when he didn’t win. From that early age, he knew that others' needs were just as important as his own. Benjy's entire life would be centered on this eternal truth.

Even as an adult, Benjy viewed the world through the eyes of a child. He loved children. When he visited friends and family, it was the children he spoke to first.

And Benjy was a performer (at least in private). At age five, he saw the movie Grease. Soon thereafter, his mother would catch him standing atop the living room couch, singing and dancing his own version of “Greased Lightning.” But such performances were not for public consumption. As a child, Benjy would become easily embarrassed, unfortunately hiding his talents. Later, in his most private times, he would listen to his favorite song, Open Arms, with its refrain,

"So now I come to you, with open arms,

nothing to hide, believe what I say.

So here I am, with open arms,

hoping you'll see what your love means to me..."

Benjy once confided that whenever he gave a public talk, he imagined Colonel Sanders in the audience. Since Benjy was prone to nervousness when speaking formally, he would feel less self-conscious if he thought of poor, elderly Colonel Sanders, dressed in his hot wool suit, sitting there uncomfortably while the room grew ever warmer.

Benjy’s imagination often confounded his family, with his creative use of the English language. At age twelve, family members (and who knows who else?) were assaulted with the ever-insulting appellation “Safety Feature.” Nobody knew what this meant, but when Benjy called you a safety feature, you found yourself amused and confused at the same time. It was all part of Benjy’s way of making people laugh, no matter what he may have been experiencing on the inside.

In his junior high school years Benjy became my mentor—at least in terms of strange, never-before-revealed scientific phenomena. In his school papers, he wrote of the Lo-Lo tree, which grew on a tropical island and whose products were used to cure a wide range of maladies. While such a tree may have existed, we were never able to precisely confirm it, at least not by this particular name.

But Benjy was an avid learner. At Fiauna’s sixteenth birthday gathering, he was first introduced, live and in person, to cows. Despite his eighteen years of maturity, his initial reaction was one of fear and loathing. But by the end of the week, he couldn’t leave without saying an individual good-bye to each of the animals.

Benjy was always up for a new adventure, such as an impromptu trip to a place for which there was no logical reason to ever go. Or you might find him riding an undersized tricycle through the aisles at Toys-R-Us, or bouncing (literally bouncing) from bed to bed at the local mattress store. He was always full of energy, and his presence would light up the room with laughter.

With all the stories that could be told about Benjy’s humorous side, it might be too easy to overlook another essential personality characteristic. From the time he was very young, and from then throughout his life, Benjy consistently shared his time and energy in the service of others. He was truly selfless, and he showed this trait every day. It might be a neighbor with a plumbing emergency, or just the daily need to help the girls get ready for school, and then to faithfully escort them there.

There was also Benjy’s immaculately kept house, and the nightly dinners that always awaited the family after a busy day. Benjy’s devotion to service was genuine and sincere. In one recent example, Benjy pushed a stranded neighbor’s non-functioning car several blocks up the street to the neighbor’s home. Whether as a neighbor, a husband, father, brother or son, Benjy lived, to the fullest extent, the savior’s injunction that we love one another, as He loved us.

I thank my son Benjy, as perhaps all of us should, for so many happy memories. His life has taught me to cherish even more the fleeting moments and the short time we have together in this world. He was a wonderful child, and a loving and truly good man. We were all privileged to know and love him. They say it is a tragedy to experience the death of a child, or that of a young husband and father, but we all mourn the passing of a soul so full of love and so capable of goodness. Simply stated, there are those lives, however brief, which touch us in a deep and wonderful way, lives that change us for the better. My son's life, which we celebrate today, was one of those lives.

I would like to close with the following:

Farewell my son,

Your journey now turns on a path I can’t follow.

And memories alone will now fill the hollow

place in my heart where dreams of your future once grew.

Farewell my young son.

Your brief time here, now ending in sorrow

will continue with joy in an unseen tomorrow,

spent elsewhere, free from the pain you once knew.

Farewell my good son,

‘Til God in his wisdom can once again bring

Us together to share in life everlasting.

And once more, to know the joy of reunion come true.

I love Benjy, and I know he loves us.