Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, everyone. Welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. John and I are taking on a single story from each week’s lesson. John, this is a great week. It’s Easter at FollowHIM. I have a story for you, and I hope it’s both fun and touching. You ready?

John Bytheway: 00:17 Yeah, I’m excited.

Hank Smith: 00:18 I’ll try to make this short. I did a longer version of this on a talk on CD I did a long time ago and also a Y Religion episode that just came out recently, but I want to tell it here again because I really love it. It’s about my in-laws, Sarah’s parents, Rod and Marlene Savage. They met when they were in elementary school in Richfield, Utah, at the Ideal Dairy. They knew each other growing up. One day, Rod was talking to his school counselor in high school, and the school counselor said, “Who are you taking to prom?” And Rod said, “Oh, I don’t do those kinds of things. I don’t go to prom. I’m going to go hunting.” And the counselor-

John Bytheway: 00:58 What’s the difference?

Hank Smith: 01:03 Yeah. And the counselor said, “Well, every girl deserves to go to prom.” And Rod never thought about that before, strangely. So he thought, “Well, maybe I’ll ask someone. I’ll ask Marlene,” right? They’ve been friends since they were kids.

  01:15 They went on this first date with each other and just had a wonderful time. Rod is very outgoing, and fun, and playful, and Marlene is a planner, organized, gets good grades. So they complimented each other really well and had a great night, and they ended up never dating anyone else again. They ended up getting married and moving down to St. George, which is where I grew up.

  01:37 This story really begins when they have their first baby, Justin, baby Justin. He’s two days old. They bring him home from the hospital. For fun, Rod decided to take Justin on a tour of the house. So here, this baby is two days old, and he starts going item to item in the house like, “This is the refrigerator. Let’s open it. This is the freezer.” And this baby’s just looking. He showed him every piece of silverware. And this tour of a little, tiny 500-square-foot apartment takes 90 minutes as he goes from painting to picture to television, just having a fun time with this baby. Well, just like most people’s houses, I bet you have some of these, John, where kind of silly things become traditions, right? Things you just did, you didn’t even think, “Oh, let’s start a tradition.” You just did it.

  02:29 And so when Baby Amy comes, there’s little Justin, two or three years old. Rod takes Baby Amy on the tour with both Justin and Marlene following along on this tour of the house. “Here’s the couch, here’s the window.” Just this silly tradition. And then their third child, their fourth child, their fifth child, which is the best one, I think, because I married her, and then the sixth child. Every time the whole family went on this tour, and then the tour was off for a little while because they didn’t have any more children. But then Justin had a baby, baby Chad. And the tour begins again for grandchildren.

  03:12 John, I had to go on this tour. By that time I had joined the family, and they said, “Chad’s here. Baby Chad is here.” And this kid’s a couple weeks old, “We’re going on the tour.” I asked my wife, I said, “What are we doing?” And she said, “This is what we do.”

John Bytheway: 03:28 It’s what we do.

Hank Smith: 03:29 So go with it. So I followed them around, and here he is showing him the piano. And he ended up using this as a teaching tool. He’d bring the baby right up to you and say, “This is your Uncle Hank. He’s going to take good care of you. He’s going to watch over you.” And you’re like, “Hey, kid.” And I still talk to that kid, John. It was part of the tour. “I have to watch out for you. I promise.” All the grandkids have been on the tour. All my kids have been on the tour. It was a fun tradition that turned into basically a family joy.

  03:59 Well, in 2013, unfortunately, my mother-in-law, Marlene, was diagnosed with liver cancer. Less than a year later, she was placed on hospice and is at home, and she’s going to pass away. The hospice nurses told Rod that it looked like she was going to pass very soon. They wanted to move her from her wheelchair to her bed one last time. Rod was about to do it when he had, I think, a spark of inspiration, John. He turned to his children, who were all there, John, all six of them are there, and some grandchildren were there, and said, “Let’s take mom on a tour.”

John Bytheway: 04:43 Oh, wow.

Hank Smith: 04:45 My wife said it was one of the most beautiful moments of her life.

John Bytheway: 04:49 Wow.

Hank Smith: 04:49 My dad took her to the family room and knelt down in front of her, and said, “47 years of family home evening, how did you put up with us?” And then took her to the television room and said, “How many shows have we watched together, Marlene? How many John Wayne movies did you have to put up with?” And then he took her to the kitchen and knelt down in front of her, and said, “How many meals have you cooked for this family?” And he said something like, “You’re the greatest cook that has ever lived.” And my wife said, “Even my mother, who is kind of in and out, smirked at that like, “Are you kidding me? I’m not the greatest cook who ever lived.’ “

  05:34 The children kind of drifted away as this husband took his bride of 47 years through the rest of the house, and he wept. They looked at the pictures of kids and grandkids, and then he took her, picked her up, and laid her gently in her bed, and sat by her side, right there on the bed, and held her hand for the next few hours as she passed away.

John Bytheway: 05:58 Wow.

Hank Smith: 05:59 He didn’t have to testify of the Resurrection, of life after death and the resurrection, he just believed in it and lived as if he believed it, right? He lived because this is what he believes, this is what he truly knows. I asked him about it, and he said, “I didn’t want to send her into the spirit world sad. I wanted her to cross over happy. I wanted to celebrate this part of her existence, her mortality.” He even whispered to her, John, right at the very end, he said, “Give my mom a big hug for me.”

  06:34 Maybe, John, with this story, one, how fun family traditions can be. Two, you never know what they might turn into, these beautiful teaching moments. And three, we might not ever have to… I mean, there’s nothing wrong with testifying of what you believe, but for my wife, she knew what her parents believed because they lived their beliefs. It was part of who they were.

  07:04 Well, thanks for listening to that long story, John. I’m grateful for you.

John Bytheway: 07:07 Oh, that’s so cool. That’s a good sendoff.

Hank Smith: 07:11 Happy Easter from FollowHIM, everyone. Come join us on our full podcast. We’re with Sister Reyna Aburto this week. It is a treat. She is just fantastic. She tells wonderful stories from her time in the Relief Society General Presidency. And then join us back here next week for another FollowHIM Favorites.