Jay Salmon’s Funeral

I arrived at the chapel for the funeral a few minutes early, just in time to write my name in the book and drop my card for the family into the box that was on the table.

People were sitting on the sides of the chapel and in the last four rows, as well as into the overflow, but the curtain was not opened into the cultural hall.

For some reason I had expected that hall to be filled and into the classrooms with the funeral piped in.

That is how large Jay Salmon’s life seemed to me. I saw many old friends: Madeline Aldridge, Barbara and Susan Rawsthrone, Ursula Benedict, Harold and Marilyn Kearl, Sandra Henninger, Conrad Henninger, Brent and Karen Davis, Viola Hudson sitting in front of me, with a son and daughter and son-in-law beside her, when I finally found a seat which was beside the Blumells. Janna has had a new baby and so I got to see a beautiful picture of him which Jean shared. Electronics are wonderful. You can pull up a large picture in an instant, and of course I enjoyed that. I saw Diane Sherwood across the way and Valerie (Scott) Dalton in another spot. Allison Harker was there and Rob and Janelle Hopkins. Darla and Don Robertson were across the room on the other side of the chapel and I saw Barbara Cassinette. Wendy LaMarche gave me a hug.  I saw Don and Marilyn Steele, and Doug and Kay Bennion, and Madeline Aldridge. Well, just too many to mention.  But I am sure to have mentioned someone there you know.

Shauna Murdock was playing prelude – some classical organ music (and when she did this, it was a wonderful organ concert), and some tunes reminiscent of well-loved hymns anyone who has grown up in the Mormon church would know. I looked at the programme and read the obituary again. Eight children, over 40 grandchildren and 113 great grandchildren, 22 of whom would be singing a musical number later – “I am trying to be like Jesus”.

I am getting ahead of myself, but the children were darling. They looked like about ½ of a normal Primary doing a Sacrament presentation. One little boy about 6 years old had on a red corduroy sport jacket that was so cute. A little girl on the end could hardly be seen, she was so little. Just ½ of her eyes, her forehead and two top knot pigtails could be seen bobbing behind that wooden panel at the front of the church. I saw a father a beaming at one of the children and giving them a thumbs up sign to show them he was going to support every note that the little person was about to sing.

The family walked in behind the casket, Doris, tall and straight with her walker and Carol beside her. I watched them file in. They were about to take more than ¾ of the front pews in the church. One person had a backpack on and a winter jacket. Some came in beards. Four little boys walked in with suits on – they looked like they were about 6, 5, 3 and 2 years old. I had forgotten that they make suits that little. Such darling little families. I could see grandmothers carrying grand babies with ease. Mothers holding the hands of others of the children in the family. Some of the women looking tired. All of them looking experienced. One little boy waved to people along the way as though he knew them and needed to say a big hello to them.  Very sweet.

I need to get the rest of the music out of the way, for it was exquisite. A musical number on a harp performed by Alita Laurie, one of the grandchildren. And Carol Salmon and one of her neices (Aubrey Lee) sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Their diction was perfect, their voices blended, they performed as though they were professionals.

The format of the funeral was as we know it in form: a life sketch and then a plan of salvation talk. Both were done with reverence and dignity.

I would like to talk for a minute about the biography done by Mark Salmon. If I had been reading it as a chapter in a book, I would say that it carried the perfect memoir form. It was delivered with the perfect pitch, pause and pace. At one point there was a crying child in the congregation, whose wail was louder than Mark Salmon’s voice which was being projected by a microphone. At that instance I felt as though I was in the perfect Mormon meeting. Child care going on and at the same time the speaker moving on as though he had no competition in the room.

Mark’s talk was delivered thoughtfully and with such care, probably telling the mourners things they might not have already known about Jay, as well as affirming the nuggets of truth all would know from the family’s retelling of incidents familiar to them.

Sixty-seven years of married life was celebrated. Fidelity and trust between the partners seemed to be no issue, though Jay might not have always one as Doris wished, as I will tell from one incident. The family was on their way to Banff and some of the teen-agers in the care had gone completely out of Jay’s control. He told them if their antics kept up, there would be no cookies for them at the end of the ride. We were assured these were not store-purchased cookies, for in those days, everything was home-made. The teens were on a roll and couldn’t be stopped. When Jay arrived at the lake, he took out the box of cookies, when to the water and skipped all of them across the surface of the water as though he was playing that game all of us know. Mark said Jay made sure none of us got any of the cookies, though mother might not have been so happy about what happened to them.

The family has a story called the green mashed potato incident, which Mark said he was not going to tell. But one part of it remains indelible in his mind. He was the irresponsible driver in a car with four other boys. They hit a lamp post. The car would still go, but they had a 2 hour discussion about what to do next after the accident occurred.  Mark knew that he could never go back home, so he was going directly to Vancouver to become a long-shore man. After much deliberating, one of the boys had Mark call home – probably from a pay phone for this was in the years before everyone had a cell phone.

Mark: Dad, I have had an accident.

Jay: Are you alright? Is everyone else in the car alright? Will the car still work? We have been thinking about you for we haven’t heard from you for two hours. Drive on home.

Jay and Doris Salmon Descendants

My circling on the back was trying to figure out which
families the musicians were coming from,
and which of the children I knew, etc.

Now I am sorry that I cannot capture the tone in which this story was told.

And it ended with a comment like, there were several other car accidents by the boys, all of them treated by Jay in this fashion.

But to go back to Mark’s tone: there was such respect in the teller’s voice toward his father as he rehearsed this incident. I think he was delivering a golden nugget of truth about good parenting of teen-agers for the perspicacious listener.

Well, two other things.

One is a family motto: Salmon’s don’t get embarrassed. They make mistakes as can happen, but their lives are pointed towards doing what is right and that is the focus of their days. Then Mark went on to tell a story about being in Disneyland in a long line up with his family. Jay Salmon kissed the head of one of his daughters who was standing beside him. But it was not his daughter, but a stranger who said, “What are you doing?” Jay said I made a mistake. I thought that was the head of my daughter. Two Jay’s kids, on hearing this, just dropped out of line and got out of there.  Either embarrassment or humiliation.  When they finally came back 45 minutes later, Jay and the woman whose head had been kissed were in a friendly banter and conversation, as though they were old friends.

Salmon’s don’t get embarrassed.

The last story I want to relate which made a mark on me today is Jay’s response on hearing a tale of woe from someone about her family, whose story ended with, “I guess every family is dysfunctional.” Jay rose to the defence of his birth family saying, my mother and dad were not dysfunctional. We did the best we could. We loved each other. We worked together. We shared. We didn’t have much. We were not dysfunctional.

Probably Mark should publish his talk somewhere. His words were beautifully chosen. No purple prose.  Not an extra word anywhere.  A testament to a family with a motto Salmons do not get embarrassed, and whose father pressed forward putting aside any notion that either his birth family or the family he raised could be labelled dysfunctional.

A perfect life sketch for Jay Salmon.

Bruce Salmon gave the gospel message, with the standard testimonies from the gospels and the prophets.  As well he  quoted Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood".

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Arta