Comfort Those Who Stand In Need of Comfort

I wish to share the following excerpt from "Follow the King," BYU devotional speech by Elder Marion D. Hanks, 11 March 1986. No further comment from me will be necessary.

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"I have to share with you, as I finish, a letter received from a special human being you may know or perhaps will know because her story, I am told, is being published. I performed a wedding many years ago. A happy marriage followed, children came, and then one day came the announcement that he didn't want to be at home anymore; he had a male friend he would rather live with. On occasional holidays he was invited back home by this very unusual woman who taught her children that he was part of them, that there were many virtuous and lovely things about him, and that he had given them much. She could not justify the thing he had done or understand his problem. But she could help the children feel a sense of individual worth and value because there was much in them that came from the good in him. He came home to die of AIDS, attended compassionately in their own home among his own family. She wrote this:


Dear Brother Hanks:


I am writing now because I want to let you know that last Thursday [he] passed away here at my home, a victim of AIDS. He had not been well for a year, but in March he was diagnosed with the disease. He made every effort to maintain his strength, but it was not possible. No one recovers. He wanted to be here with us, and I wanted him to be here. I read Walt Whitman to him and played Beethoven for him and told him how much we all loved him and did what I could to make him as comfortable as possible. Last night the children and I and a few close friends held a private memorial service for him here at my home. It was a wonderful event and we are all able to release him with love. The children will miss [him] a great deal. I will too. He gave a lot to all of us.


Somewhere there is a sense to this. I have been granted a great deal of strength to help me through it, and for that I am grateful.

Then she compliments her choice bishop and stake president and friends and others who have supported and sustained her.

I wake up some mornings remembering her words: 'I read Walt Whitman to him and played Beethoven for him.' And sometimes I say, 'Lord, if today I can approach that kind of Christian quality I will be grateful.'

Follow the Christ. Live pure. Speak true. Right wrong."