DAY 6 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIKE!

Michael Evans Roe in 1950

On September 6, 1946, my mom gave birth to their first child: Michael Evans Roe. Having been childless for 10 years, they were thrilled to finally have the family they’d always wanted. They lived in a tiny rented 1-bedroom house, and converted the closet under the stairs into a bedroom for Mike. There was a washtub they used for washing clothes, dishes, and the baby. This washtub saw a lot of use.

Mike loved playing Cowboy

   One day, when he was only 4-years-old, Mike was outside playing Cowboys with a few of the neighbor kids – when he was hit by a drunk driver – right in front of this house. According to the newspaper article, he was hit so hard that it knocked the cowboy boots right off his feet. By the time my dad got to the hospital, it was too late. He found Mom sitting in the hospital waiting room, clutching Mike’s teddy bear. She was devastated – and she never got over it. Never.

   Dad’s cousin Lewis drove up to Oakland to scoop up Mom and Dad and take care of them. Lew was smart enough to know that going home to that empty house should wait for a few days. Lew’s wife Alice fixed them the only thing Mom would eat, Warm Milk and Bread. My Uncle DeVoe paid for the headstone. Everyone stepped up and helped Mom & Dad through the worst time of their life. Everyone except the driver. The drunk driver was never charged (it was 1950), never apologized, and never paid a dime of the hospital or burial costs.

Mom & Mike - his 1st birthday

   Mike would have been age 19 when I was born, and Mom still couldn’t talk about him – or even say his name without crying. And 35 years later, when she died, that still held true. She was heartbroken for the 50 years from when Mike died until she passed away at age 83 – she literally never got over it. I remember once when I was about 5 or 6, Mom was crying in her bedroom – so Dad gently scooted me out to the dining room. As he emptied his pockets he told me that sometimes Mom got sad, and we just needed to be quiet and let her rest. Over the years that happened fairly regularly. I now understand why.

    When I was age 15 my now-married sister, Fran, came to Oakland to visit. For a Genealogy class she’d taken at BYU, she had ordered Mike’s Death Certificate – and on it was listed the cemetery where he was buried. Neither of us had ever been there. We snuck away and drove to the cemetery, looked in the designated location, but couldn’t find his grave. It was a small section in an enormous cemetery – a section specifically designated for infants and children. We looked at the dates from the 1940s and 1950s, laid out chronologically – and the ages, from infants that died at birth to children that died at only 8-years-old. It was a small section of the cemetery, but it was certainly filled with sadness. We found the place we thought should be Mike’s grave, but it was just a bare spot of grass – with no headstone to mark his resting place. We continued to search the area, but we were sure this was the spot – but we were also sure that something was wrong. Unfortunately it was late in the day, and the cemetery was closing – so we had to leave, with all of these questions unanswered. And because we knew it would upset our parents, Fran and I decided to just have it be our secret.

   Six months later when I got my Driver’s License, I went back to the cemetery – this time all alone. I went to the office, again looked, again returned to that bare patch of grass. So I returned to the Cemetery Office and explained the situation. A very nice woman pulled out a file, confirmed that a headstone had been purchased, and send a Groundskeeper out with me to see if a little grass had grown over the marker. He walked to that same spot of grass where I thought Mike was buried, and tapped the ground with his shovel. Nothing. More tapping, a bit deeper – still nothing. Then he stepped on the shovelhead, all the way into the ground before the “klink” of the metal shovel hitting the granite headstone. The full shovel head – about 12-inches-long. It had been 30 years since Mike died, and his loss had been so painful that my parents hadn’t been back to the cemetery in 30 years. 30 years of grass had grown over the unvisited headstone.

Mike at Lake Merritt 1949

   Mike died 64 years ago, and would have turned 68-years-old today – but he is forever frozen in time as a 4-year-old.  Almost everyone that knew him is gone now. My sister and I never got to meet him, and know very few stories about him. But for 4 years he was the center of the universe for my parents. For 50 years his loss was my mother’s deepest heartache. And forever he will be our big brother.

   And that’s the beauty of understanding the gospel and having a testimony. You get to be sealed as a family, so the amount of time that you get to spend together on this earth is only part of the picture. The loss of a child is the most heartwrenching experience any parent can go through, but knowing you will be together for eternity can buoy you through the difficult times. After my mom passed away, Dad told me of a dream he had:  Mom and Mike were walking down the big hill at the cemetery, hand in hand – together. And I know that my dad believed it, and it comforted him to know that they were finally together again.

Dad and Mike

  And that’s why Mormons build temples and do genealogy – because Family is what this life is all about. It is the reason we come to this earth, and it is the reason that we love – because we are building those bonds here that will continue long after this life ends. When you know about eternity, you want eternity. And because we have a loving Heavenly Father, we can have eternity.