Coming home (to the in-laws) from the viewing of a poor woman who was murdered I had decided to visit my mother. Always a hard choice to make. But I did it.

My eldest brother was there and my youngest sister. So my mother had her first born, her most middle child (and black sheep) and her youngest - a spread of her 20 years of baby making. And ironically we are all on the beginning of another decade of life - 60, 50, and 40 years old.

But I digress. In the course of the conversation I found out how my mother and little sister knew a relative of the family of the visitation. Utah is a small world. And then my mother turned up the crazy.

She had a dream (I visibly cringed because they often are about my death) and of course she doesn't share a dream (or vision) without it being very important. Well, my dead father had decided to come and visit her in her sleep. How nice of him.

Innocuous enough I guess. The details were weird like she was standing somewhere she couldn't describe and didn't know where she was but she was alone. But then she saw my father. He didn't speak but came up to her and grabbed her hand. And the important bit was his had was really warm like it used to be in life. She said that is what he always did. They were always holding hands. I didn't see it but whatever. It is her dream.

And then when she was holding his hand or rather him holding hers and while she was marveling that it wasn't cold she had another thought. Wait for it.

Was he resurrected ??? She was just 100 percent sure he was because she had been praying to know what happened to my father. And her prayer was answered but she couldn't figure out whether he was resurrected or not because well, you know, there are people out there in the world who have been. He probably was because his hand was warm.

So she called my little sister (who confirmed this) because my little sister teaches something CES related or Sunday School or something. And she will know.

What followed was a bizarre conversation between my mother, my eldest brother and my little sister about how if the person is the devil they will offer their hand or if they just need to deliver a message they won't offer their hand and on and on.

My wife and I just sat there without comment until they concluded that my father probably wasn't resurrected and that the dream was important and though it probably wasn't a message it was what my mother needed to reassure her about the state of my father's soul.

And there folks you have Mormonism in action, helping regular people deal with death an dying.

Your post hit a note with me. While my mother never mentioned visits from the after life, but she would have these weird discussions about every decision she made. i.e. Don't think your Father would want that or I wonder what your Father would say. She would never refer to him by name, only as "My Father". IMO, I partly blame the control she gave my father which I think is part of her Mormon frame of mind. Fast forward 5 years after we sold the house, moved to a smaller place and she started dating (with my encouragement). She found a nice boyfriend who treated her well. I used to tease her about sex out of marriage. After she passed, I found out she got married by proxy to my Dad in the St George temple. Note my father was never Mormon, hated the church and cheated on my mother through the entire marriage. I didn't understand her behavior until I realized it was her final "FU" to my father.

I know my mother and the family have those kinds of discussions. Mostly they avoid them around me, but, Mom does like to let me know every once in a while that Dad has parted the veil and visited to tell her that her time has not yet come to join him.

She is in no hurry to go either.

What I read into your post, EB, is how hard it is to be part of a Mormon family. Why do we bother?

I have been part of an extremely diverse community for the last forty years--ethnically, religiously, and other ways---and I am always shocked at how so many actually enjoy time with their families and look forward to time together when my TBM family only do the minimum duty visits begrudgingly. My oldest brother the most Mormon of all with the Second Anointing and all just announced he will be so busy he won't be able to even call Mom once a week for quite a while. Being Temple pres is apparently very demanding. He's probably the most selfish SOB I've ever met. Not even 10 minutes a week for a woman in her nineties at an assisted living home. Being Temple Pres is apparently very demanding and his boss Jesus is a real task master.

Meanwhile Mom brags non stop about what a wonderful family we are and how much fun and the selfish oldest brother is the pinnacle of her grand Mormon matriarchy while another brother and sister do things for her non-stop just because they are lovely.

Mormonism ruins family.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Meanwhile Mom brags non stop about what a
> wonderful family we are and how much fun and the
> selfish oldest brother is the pinnacle of her
> grand Mormon matriarchy while another brother and
> sister do things for her non-stop just because
> they are lovely.
>
> Mormonism ruins family.

My mother stands all amazed at the indifference Mormon Jesus offers her. Confused by the faces of family he proffers her. Oh, it is comfortable because he makes them scared of her.

My mother is bat salt crazy and tells me one thing about something and does another. With her home she remodeled her basement into something like a one room apartment. When she kicked out my nephew and his family she said see would rent and not to family. Now she showed it to me and said it was for her family.

Elder Berry Wrote:
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> bat salt crazy

Thank you, Elder Berry! Thank you for finally giving me the recognition I deserve--

--and everything else you do for our RfM community.

How about this one:
My wife's brother claims that he had a visionary dream where he was actually visited by the deceased father and deceased brother.

He received the message that they were doing fine in the spirit world, and looked forward to the future where the whole clan (sealed together in LDS temples) could be together and eventually reside in the celestial kingdom.

Then it got weird. My bro-in-law claimed that the deceased father and deceased brother lived exactly 49 miles apart in the spirit world. I asked "how do you know that it's not 50 miles, or 1 mile, or 100 miles? - - and is it logical that they measure distance in the spirit world in miles?"

And "how do you know that it was an actual visitation from your relatives, and not just a dream like people all over the globe have while sleeping?"

I had to stop paying attention to the nonsense. He was saying stuff like "I have dreams, and this was totally different - it had to be an actual visitation from Dad and brother because it was so different . . . . ." and so on and on

Tell your BIL they actually measure distances in cubits. Next time this comes up, ask him how many kilocubits in 49 miles. ;)

And if that doesn't stop him, the next time say you heard that cubits are a different size on Kolob, so how many Kolokilocubits are in 49 miles? ;))

ahhhh . . . if only I could hie to Kolob . . .

Bruce R. McConkie (the smartest human being who ever lived) explains that Kolob is mentioned in the Book of Abraham (incredible papyrii actually written by the hand of Abraham) and Kolob is the star nearest to God. Kolob means first creation. Spirit beings and immortal persons live in eternity, mortal men live in time. Eternity goes on forever and is of infinite duration. Time is of finite proportions, beginning for each person at birth and ending at death.

from the hymn:
The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound
Improvement and progression have one eternal round
There is no end to matter, there is no end to space
There is no end to spirit; there is no end to race

IOW the universe is infinitely big - maybe over 500 billion galaxies with each galaxy averaging about 500 billion stars.
And where exactly is Kolob in this whole gigantic place? . . . . .

I wish Mom and Pop would visit me. But they probably won’t because I tend to cuss.

Jesus won't let them visit.

I wish Mom and Pop would visit me. But they probably won’t because I tend to cuss.

One side of my family has lots of stories like that, EB. For them the veil apparently does not exist.

What's memorable from my perspective is that the visions occur almost exclusively to the most psychologically messed up members of that family. The most recent experience (that was shared with me) was of a woman who was visited by her son, a man who died prematurely after a long and difficult life--rendered much more so by the mother herself. He rightfully felt betrayed and tormented by her.

She told me that one night she woke to see her son standing in her bedroom with his back to her. She found the vision calming and reassuring.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> She told me that one night she woke to see her son
> standing in her bedroom with his back to her. She
> found the vision calming and reassuring.

Sounds like a variation on the theme of this post.

I think she was desperately hoping that her son had forgiven her for how she tormented him for so many decades. She needed to see him.

That he had his back to her didn't seem to matter to her although a shrink might well have reached a different conclusion.

Family tragedies. . .

I’d have interpreted that dream as my son turned his back on me.

Yeah, she urgently needed to see him and urgently needed him not to reject her. There was a touch of desperation in her account.

Necessity is the mother of invention.