Handwritten Autobiography of BCE, Sept. 9, 1982

Hand written document left by Beatrice Cannon Evans

Note:  For the most part, this document reflects some of Mother’s hand written pages during the period between the death of her husband, David W. Evans on August 7, 1982 and her death on July 12, 1985.

“September 9, 198?  “September 9, 1982 was our 60^th wedding anniversary. [This was not true. They were September 9, 1920, 22 years earlier.]

“Autobiography of Beatrice Cannon Evans

“Fortunately, on May 18, 1894 the first child of John M. Cannon and Zina Bennion.

‘Fortunately’, is a weak and common expression for the reality that they who were privileged to have physical bodies and had not joined Satan’s offer of joining with him and all having the certainty of salvation by simply following him and all being given a sure salvation by giving up free agency to work out our own salvation by following him who guaranteed by just doing as he chose for us all, without any effort (or development personal effort, just do as he dictated – thus losing the joy and privilege of a body of flesh and blood, with its pleasure though also some temporary pains.

“So birth with a tangible, physical body with the comparatively brief probation of freedom by each one of free agency to work out for himself his eternal destiny.

“As a consequence, our eternal spirits would gain some certainty by following this easy tempting offer with no further exemption or requirement of self inexertion.  Too many found it a tempting offer to save further personal struggle.

“So we who chose the apparently more difficult role and took upon ourselves the role of exercising the struggle of making or losing this temptingly easy-sounding way followed Satan in his effort to gain such a following which would add to his own success of personal power.

“And this period, the briefest but most vital period of our existence would determine our eternal estate of “joy” for do we not just hope that our great God, our Creator, spoke that man is that he might have joy, and could have the privilege to earn that eternal joy with an eternal life of joy.  One third of those eternal spirits eagerly fell for his promise of an easy life.

“So that vital day of May 18, 1894 began my choice, the short period of probation with its period of eternity.  I am following the humanly easiest way of telling most about myself.

“But now in a family record of recorded blessings to the elder ones of our living family of eleven just one word was recorded about me just “Old Age.” At eighty eight as I am at present recording I am eighty eight years plus as I now record and I am daily – hourly grateful for each day of opportunity to focus  (sp) on each days gift in mortality, this priceless, brief time of probation.

“Too many unprofitable thought of how much better the time should rapidly passing time in regrets of what should have been – and too much now is spent in futile regrets instead of action.

“The live words my student mother quoted from regarding May Miller raking hay in her masters field instead of sitting at his side in his mansion – Of all sad words saddest are these, “it might have been.”

“I have of late let these echo in my mind when I owe so immeasurably much to the fact which my very much younger brother in law said of such blessed as I, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“However short or long my remaining days may be, I feel every day from the great shoulders of Giants and am more consciously grateful for this priceless blessing and the debt I can never fully repay for this shoulder I stood upon at birth but each day now swells my heart with gratitude.

“And swellingly larger each day of life even beyond the comparatively recent death of my husband, David W. Evans, and the fine five sons God has granted us with such a  posterity.

“A fine Bennion cousin, Dr. Lowell Bennion in a recent talk to “The Classics Club” in which I was favored to be chosen as a member, that each of us, no matter what our age, youth or old, maybe should prepare ourselves to be able to live alone if need be.

“Tonight gives new evidence that I never can be ‘alone’ with the husbands I so recently lost, when my own grandson, David the third picked me up to go to the hospital where his very intelligent wife, Mary, had just given birth to their baby and given me the honor and joy of holding her in my arms.

“If I should double my already great length of life I could never express sufficient gratitude and

consciousness of what I owe for the shoulders I stood upon at birth plus the devotion still express to me in this joyful episode of this evening at 88 years plus.  Each day is an added gift showered upon me.  Despite what seemed the inevitable loss of my fine, great husband, the father of our children?

“At first this loss seemed too overwhelmingly impossible to bare. – even a feeling that such a loss as this was too much to bare.  But tonight I (rejoice) for the gift every hour of life remaining to me – though what I do to repay this privilege is as DWE said is up to me to prove payment of this privilege. I am now curious (sometime doubt doing my part –but still hoping and trying, trying , joyful at the opportunity  I rejoice as my husband long since called my attention to the multiplicity times the scriptures give this admonition, “Rejoice,” Rejoice.”

“Tonight at almost midnight i still ‘rejoice’ beyond stopping to rejoice with gratitude for each moment of life so freely given me.

“And may these few words at nearly midnight hour, be a drop in the bucket the privilege of being still in mortality to but feebly to express it.

“When my great husband, the father of my children, so suddenly, and with seemingly unnecessary accident I felt all joy in life was gone. 

“My loss was the greatest hurt, though since I have looked with some clarity to other widows who have gone quietly and uncomplainingly along.

And God be praised as I rejoice even as I go this midnight to my lonely pillow.  I rejoice and (God help me) to pass some joyful gratitude on to my super abundant members of our appreciative descendents.

“Dave said he wanted to go first, “I don’t want to be there without you.”

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

A gift beyond price.

“It doesn’t matter so much what happens to you. as the way you take it.”

My great, intelligent comrade and father of my five fine sons was taken with the swiftness of a sward’s blade, in what seemed such an unnecessary accident while striking a jeep parked close to the road as we suddenly dropped down hill.

Our interests and activities much in common -- that sudden seemingly so unnecessarily cut off.  This was surely worse for me than for the other widows of my acquaintance who were so calmly going on with life.

He was so much more useful than I, his life more important.

While this seems too private (besides having some quality publishing and complaining myself.)

 He said, “I want to go first. I don’t want to be there alone without you.”

This of course was worse for me than for the numerous widows who go calmly onward.

This section is gathered from several related notes

.

“I stayed home from starting school at the university to take care of my aging grandmother who though she had but  three and a half months of school, but enjoyed good literature. 

She told me “It doesn’t matter so much what happens to you, it’s the way you take it.”

(A related note)

“It came not as the sound of a great amen.  It came from the lowly lips of the gentle little Mary Turpin, the grandmother.  I had in the past desired, and taken for granted, that I would receive academic schooling.”  [She apparently felt this was part of the cause she didn’t have that opportunity.]

Note: She sat with her dying grandmother for three and a half months before she died. 

Beatrice reports: 

“For all of the up and down experiences of her life from when she, Grandma Mary Turpin, vividly recalled, at the age of four years, in Nauvoo, the murderers crowding around her family’s adequate, comfortable home tremblingly crying  the news that had come to them of the martyrdom of the Prophet  “Old Joe smith is dead! Old Jo Smith is dead! Now you’ll never go to America.”

Grandma often said, “It doesn’t matter so much what happens t you, as much as the way you take it.”

“Like a gracious gift from heaven has been the now companionship of my intelligent, progressing presence of my gifted granddaughter Lark with her equally gifted husband – as unexpected as the heavenly call of the Lark, when it resounded to those who heard it demanded listening to hear it – almost a divine message which required listening as does the spirit – the voice of God in our mortal probation’s too brief existence.”

“Also the words of Maria Young Dougal, one of the daughters of Brigham Young whom he set apart with the gift of blessing other sisters in the Church with the specialty as they as sisters have the responsibility of bearing children, were set apart by their father, Brigham Young “for the blessing of those in the ordeal of bearing children.”

“My great mother, Zina B. Cannon, was a friend of two of Brigham Young’s daughters whom he had set apart for this purpose – and I had had a rather long illness before my marriage and had been warned that I had a “hearth condition” which I would always have and that if I had children “I would take my own chances.”

“We were married comparatively late in life because Dave had had early responsibility thrown upon him through the untimely death of his father.”