Esther Marie Hansen Jones

Remembering Esther

-By Sky (Jones) Morris

When Freeman called to ask about my writing something about my mother, Esther, I was out inthe garden weeding and watering the beans. A cell phone was brought out to me. Both those things reminded me of my mother. What a great gardener she was! And also a woman who loved to talk on the phone! Alas that she gardened in the days before cell phones...

Esther was definitely an information gatherer and sharer. She wrote letters to her siblings, her children and friends. She saved most of the letters that were sent to her. Reading them has been an eye-opener for me--insights about yesterdays. She eagerly went to the mail box everymorning, and handwritten letters brightened her entire day--none more than the arrival of the thick "Round Robin" letter circulated among her sisters, sisters-in-law and her mother, Annie.

George and Esther were sent to Bryant Junior High School in Salt Lake City. At this very young age they maintained an apartment together, and worked to support themselves. Esther worked before and after school for a well-to-do family doing kitchen chores and child care. Annie sent them some foods, such as cured bacon in the mail. For high school they moved to Richfield, lived with extended family, and both graduated there in 1929.

Mother initially went to the University of Utah, along with her friend Irene from Boulder, but Esther soon transferred down to BYU, where she completed work for a Normal Certificate so she could teach school. She taught in a one room school in Tropic for one year only, declaring that teaching was most difficult, and not a career for her.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (in Boulder)...life took another twist. The CCC (Civilian Conservation) boys were working in the area and mother met Lafe Jones, They became better acquainted back in northern Utah. Esther and Lafe were married in the Salt Lake Temple, December 21,1934--the same day as her younger sister, Christella and Joe Naylor.

My childhood memories of Mom include seeing her work hard, dawn to dark-thirty or beyond to be an efficient homemaker and provide for us food, clothing, (tinsel-winged fairy costume, flower girl taffeta dress, pajamas, dresses, shirts, etc.--many that she sewed from the "designer" "flour sack" materials of World War 2 . She painted and wall-papered the house, planted lilac bushes, roses, gaillardia, and snapdragons, but her favorite were the "little purple pansies" that she placed in shady places around the yard. She cooked and baked fine bread, rolls, and pies on a coal stove and canned fruits and vegetables from our garden and orchard with the same patience and expertise. Our dirty clothes were washed in an old wringer washer and hung outside to dry on the clothes-line--even in winter. We retrieved them at dusk, frozen stiff as boards. We then draped them all over the house to hopefully thaw and dry out overnight.

Sometimes Mom sang--just some joy spilling out. But mostly she was very self-conscious about her voice. She tended to be a somewhat quiet and retiring person in groups. She liked to be the unsung "secretary" or "helper" in church or PTA-type organizations. She tended to be a very chatty and "at ease" when her quilting friends came to the house, and with a few special close friends and relatives. She had no reservations or shyness when she delivered food, home canned goods, freshly beheaded and plucked chickens, clothes or quilts to persons she found in need. Since we lived a couple of blocks from the railroad tracks, hobos sometimes stopped by and Mom fixed them a fine meal. Generosity was a natural part of Esther's makeup.

She tended to do a lot of rueing, and what-if-ing about decisions she would make. This resulted in a lot of returned purchases to the store, some "we'll do this", "no maybe that", "or something else"..., and post mortem wonderings if her contributions were good enough. But as I shared an afternoon with Grandma Annie, I could see those same tendencies and patterns. An outsider looking at the lives of either Annie or Esther could discern many accomplishments showing great fortitude in the face of difficulties and disappointments--and would laud them both as very courageous, surely deserving respect and appreciation.

When Esther was nearing death, Christine and I, the family nurses who predicted that her demise would be within a few days, called Juanita and her family who made flight reservations which had them staying in Utah for four days to see Mom alive, and be present for the funeral. We kept our vigil at her bedside at the Larsen Care Center in Lehi. Her labored breathing kept its uneven pattern day after night. Juanita's family had return flight tickets for Monday afternoon, so on Saturday, I wondered how it would play out. I was alone that evening with Mom, thinking it would be another long night. Then I became aware that her breathing was very shallow, and a peaceful silence ensued.

Esther's viewing was held Sunday evening, with ever so many of our Southern Utah relatives making the drive up. Vera was particularly touched to be there, and we all to see her. The funeral was held Monday morning and the Popes flew back to St. Paul Monday afternoon. Mother loved funerals. She said because so many good things were said about folks. We hope that she loved her own. We had a sampling of a few of the dozens of quilts she had made folded across the half-walls at the sides of the pulpit. My daughter Celeste and her friend Monica sang a song that Celeste wrote for her Grandma Esther: "Stories on Cloth" about those quilts. Esther's former Bishop spoke of her Sabbath keeping, her faithful tithe paying her kindness to others, and his memories of visiting us to pick fruit, or cucumbers, or the homemade soap making in an old tin tub over a small outdoor fire--and his amazement at pouring the boiled liquid into cardboard boxes where it hardened and was cut into soap bars and shared with them.

Esther was buried at the side of Lafe, and near her son Ronald in the Lehi City Cemetery. Oh, but this is not quite the end of the story. Her death date had not yet been inscribed on their shared headstone. For Memorial Day we determined to get that in place. The arrangements were made with the Monument Company, but to my chagrin, it did not get done. I called the errant engravers and asked why. He checked his records and said that death date had indeed been placed on the marker about a week ago. I insisted that the headstone was as bare as when Mother was alive.

Doubtful, he said he would check for sure. But even if it were not there, there would be no time now before Memorial Day to get it done. Worse, he was wondering, where did they engrave that death date? I looked around the cemetery and found her death date on a fairly large ornate marker of another E. Jones (not Esther). I had to wonder how this woman would take the news of her premature death written in stone if she came to bring flowers for her deceased husband.

For me this was a fun little remembrance of Mom's having to reconsider commitments. Finalizing, even her tombstone data, required a second go-round.

Well, I have written these snippets of my memories of my mother Esther on the first try, in one sitting, Perhaps I'll suffer a little "what-if-itis" about other good glimpses I might have shared, but I doubt it...perhaps my sisters or children will add more dimensions.

So to Queen Esther as she was called by a visiting church official from Teasdale who performed her baptism in a "ditch pond" in Boulder at the annual summer baptisms' ceremony; I also salute her. ".....and who knoweth whether (she did) come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14.

To look into her father's coffin covered with glass to protect from contagion when she was only four years old...he died on her fourth birthday.

To lose a promising son of her own, a bright graduate student in "life's prime"....

To anguish over another son, mentally-emotionally handicapped with the attendant dependencies and needs.

To sew and quilt, and can and garden and sweat and toil, and give open-handedly the fruits this industry produced...

To use her meager "egg money" from her small flock of chickens to give me piano lessons,

To struggle with relationship disappointments, and search for meanings in a life that often turned out differently than she had expected,

To walk each week (in later years) clothed in sacred white, serving at the Provo Temple together with friends from her Lehi neighborhood,

To encounter life's declines, near-blindness, faltering gait, annoying aging, with an accepting dignity for the most part....

To have lived, and given life....Mother, Thank you!

Written by Esther's oldest child: Anna Kathleen "Sky" Jones Morris

June 16, 2006 at Ioka (near Roosevelt), Utah