The News of Today

My mother had e-mailed me and told me he wasn't doing well. I didn't think much more about it until I received an e-mail from Kristi today. Jim Duchane passed away.

Sitting in my windowless office I found my eyes misting with tears. I had work to do, but memories and thoughts were going through my mind. There were least four feet of snow on the ground in Concord, New Hamshire where I saw him last. He talked of the expense of heating his house with kerosene. It seems homeowners in New Hampshire always talk about the expense of heating their homes in the winter, just as Californians always seem to talk about money. I had asked him, as I often ask people, how he had met his wife.

Brother Duchane had fallen in love with a spunky, red-headed, Mormon woman many years ago. She was a security guard and he said she could beat the tar out of anyone. He was smitten. Even years later I could see that he was so taken by this woman who could beat up anyone.

I met Brother Duchene at church as a child. His two girls who were still children when I left for college. The summer after my mission, I visited a small branch in Northern New Hampshire where Branch President Duchene and his family are now attending. His oldest daughter is now soon leaving to attend college and wants to study forensics, and there was MG, his wife. My eyes are now misting as I think about MG.

MG was my primary teacher when I was a child. She loved being in Primary because her energy level matched ours. She never belonged in Relief Society, she belonged with us. She gave us homemade pies if we attended her class with perfect attendance each month. Month after month she delivered my pie to my home.

I remember the first time I came to know of this person called MG. I went with my mother to the Mother-Daughter Homemaking meeting. It seemed everyone would talk about this woman MG, old women, young women, everyone seemed to adore her. The first time I saw her she hugged an old woman. She is the spunky red-headed security guard who could beat anyone up, the woman who made Brother Duchane's eyes glow with the memory of first meeting her. How she must be missing him.

An hour or so later I am distracted by my phone signaling that I have a text. It is Deborah, my beautiful trainer from my mission, announcing the birth of her third child. I text back a quick congratulations and letting her know how proud I am of her accomplishment in bringing this child into the world. How happy she must be for her new daughter.