When I was a child and my brothers and I would be fighting, my Dad would start singing "Love at Home"
I have started to sing it to my children when they are fighting. I learned this week that his Dad would sing it to them. While it doesn't always work it helps calm me down. Isn't it amazing the things we learn from generations before us with out even realizing?
My Grandpa Tolman was born on October 19, 1923. It was a freezing, cold, day and according to him it froze the hair right of his head and that is why he was bald. Some of the stories I remember him telling where of him and his brother getting caught up by their suspenders in the trees while riding a cow. Once when their cat had a litter and his Mom told him they couldn't keep the cats. So he and his brother took them to the well and said "I baptize you.....Amen" and threw them in the well. I don't think she was very happy with them about that. He went on a Mission to the North West Region and while there met a girl named
Mary Madeline Gingell. He told her that it was to hard to remember and he would have to change that. After his Mission he proposed to her on a family car trip by singing "Mary, Mary, quite contrary will you Marry Me?" They were married in the Logan Temple July 29, 1949.
They have 8 children and many grandchildren, great grandchildren and a great great granddaughter. He was a very loving man and very funny. He always had funny sayings, Horses and ducks and cows and pigs, Come and Eat the mustard and the meat. My dad says these and I find myself saying them to my kids. Breaking out in song and making up funny songs just because. He always had such a great sense of humor.
He would let us grandkids but wigs on him and I remember him proudly wearing a T Shirt with the saying "With a body like this who needs hair?" His favorite icecream was Neopalatin and his favorite candy bar was a payday.
He was short in stature but large in spirit. He had a huge testimony and made sure his grandchildren knew how important it was and also how much he loved us even when we were not making the best choices. He loved his wife, and we were not to disrespect her. I remember as a teen a cousin and I were not being very nice to her and I don't think I have ever seen him so mad!
He would sing song my name every time he saw me. "Hello Tracie Fern," I believe he has a nickname for each grandkid. I miss hearing him call me that.
The day before he past away he did his Home teaching and when we went to visit him (he wasn't sick) he told us, I am going home tomorrow who is coming with me? We laughed thinking he was teasing. I remember praying that night for him not to be in pain anymore. The phone rang about 3AM and I knew something was wrong. I don't think I have ever had a prayer answered so fast. We went to the ER and found him resting on Grandma's chest. He passed away later that evening. He was my first Grandparent to pass away, just 2 months prior to his 80th birthday. August 19, 2003
It was very hard, I hadn't been making good choices with my life but had just started to get back on track when he passed. I was very sad he didn't get to see me come back to the church. The following summer I had the opportunity to go on the Pioneer Trek with the YSA. We went to Rocky Ridge, for those of you not familiar with this area it is a very steep rocky hill that we pulled hand carts up. I was struggling with the handcart so one of the members of the YSA bishopric told me just to hold onto him. Everything was going better until someone dressed in white pulled me off of my "family" I had "died" and was no longer able to help them or get help from them. I broke down sobbing, realizing what a tragedy it was for the pioneers. When I reached the top this YSA Bishopric member Mike Layne (he is such a good man, and someone I will always look up to) hugged me and asked why I was crying. Was it because I wanted to quit or was it something else. I told him of my struggles in life and getting back on the right path and how sad I was that my Grandpa passed before he could see me making the changes in my life, and how I wanted him to be proud of me. I never told anyone else this, just him.
Later that summer my brother Adam got married. I rode with my parents to the temple and my Dad started to tell me about a dream he had that night. Grandpa was with him at the temple and said I want you to know I will be there today, and then in the dream my Dad and Grandpa were all of a sudden standing at Rocky Ridge watching me climb the hill. He turned to my Dad and said I am so Proud of her and the choices she has made. And then his dream was over. My Dad said he didn't understand the last part of the dream but I was crying in the back seat of the car.
I knew. He is always watching me, he loves me, and will always be apart of my life even if I can't see him. And now I knew he had seen my changes and how hard it was to come back to the church (just like Rocky Ridge was hard to climb) and he was proud of me. I told my parents the story and they too were in tears. I am so grateful for Eternal Families and a Loving Father in Heaven. I am so blessed. He would have been 87 this Wednesday. Happy Birthday Grandpa. I love you and can't wait to see you again! And to see you with hair!
Love,
Tracie Fern
