Since most of those reading this story know and love Leann Rigby Denning, it will come as no surprise when I tell you that she is a model when it comes to showing kindness and love.  There have been very few times in my life, where I have witnessed any anger from my mother.  Okay, maybe a dirty dog on clean towels could be an exception to that rule, but that story has already been told.   Even in those times as a child when I was angry at my mother and told her I hated her, she would respond with “I know, and I love you, too”.   Do you know how frustrating that can be, to give anger, and receive kindness and love in return.

During my years at Bonneville High School, my mother was the assistant librarian.  She was well known at the high school.  She knew all my friends and she also knew all my teachers.  So, basically, there was very little that she didn’t know about my high school experience.    If the truth be told, I found this actually a benefit.  If I needed money, she was there.   If I needed to talk, she was there.  Basically, she was always there for me.  As I think back on my life, with all I have experienced, both good and bad, I have to say that the one person that has always been there for me, is my mother.  She has always been and still is my best friend.

As the librarian, she would help students find books, talk with them, and in general was a friend to many a student at that high school.  So, it came as no surprise when, in my junior year, she came home and called us all together.  She explained that she had become good friends with an Native American boy who was attending Bonneville High School by the name of Menford Bird In The Ground, we called him Miff.  He was staying with an LDS family and was not happy and was contemplating going back to his reservation, which I believe was in Montana.

Let me preface this story with the following.   At this time in history, the LDS Church was big on helping young Native American children.  The thought was that the children could live with a qualified LDS family during the school year and then return to their home on the reservation during the summer.  This would allow these children the opportunity to attend better schools, preparing them for life.   The program was eventually terminated.  Though there were many a success story, in the end the difference in lifestyles, attitudes and understandings, were just too much and there were just too many issues that had to be resolved.

This is where Miff found himself in his senior year.   He did not like the family he was staying with and I guess, they did not like him.  Basically, the story was going to end here, with Miff going back to his home.  He had told all this to my mother and, as she always has done, felt concern with what was happening.  So, we as a family had a meeting, and the ask was, “Could Miff live with us during the second half of his senior year?”  I was a junior, Doug was a Sophomore, Ann in 8th grade and Debbie in 5th.  At the time, we lived in a nice four bedroom home in Iona, Idaho.   Upstairs Mom and Dad had their room, Ann and Debbie had their room and downstairs Doug had his room and I had my room (which by the way, I was not willing to share).  Doug offered to share his room with Miff and so it was decided that he would live the next 5 months in our home.

I believe at the time Doug was working after school, I had finished up the football season and was into the basketball season.   The girls had their activities, both mom and dad had their jobs.  We all had our schedules and now we had to incorporate another schedule, Miff’s.  I have to be honest here, in that Miff and I did not always see eye to eye.   I had not known of him prior to his coming to our home, but he knew of me because my participation in high school sports.  Also, I had always been the oldest child and had the run of the house.  With his entrance into our home, this changed.  I guess in some ways we both had our stubborn streaks and that did not make for a tight relationship.  Doug and Miff got along well.  Doug spent a lot of time talking with him and I believe they were good friends.  Miff and I tolerated each other.  And, as expected, my mother and Miff spent many hours talking, with her trying to help him through those tough times.  She basically showed him a love that I don’t believe he had ever experienced.

The five months came and went, school ended and Miff got a job in Yellowstone park and left for the summer.  Our family settled into our summer routine.  Dad, Doug and I spent most of the summer hauling firewood, which is another story, for another time.  Miff stayed in contact with my mother and at the end of the summer he had decided to go to Rick’s College (now BYU Idaho).  He would call my mother whenever he needed to talk something through.  I do not have all the details as to what was discussed or what happened, mostly because I just didn’t care, because I was busy in my senior year of high school, sports and a girl friend.  There wasn’t much time for anything else.

Towards the end of that school year, Miff had been having some difficult times, mostly staying true to his beliefs or maybe vanquishing old ones that haunted him.  Either way, he found himself at our house in a heart to heart discussion with both my mother and father.  I believe that he asked my father to give him a blessing at this time.  Then, shortly thereafter, he made a decision to serve an LDS mission.  He was called to the Arizona Holbrook mission.  He left later that summer.   I had graduated high school and was going to Ricks.  The school year at Ricks ended and I left on my mission to Italy.  Miff and I wrote to each other while we were both out serving.  Also, prior to his mission he had decided to change his last name from Bird In The Ground to Wyman, his grandfather’s last name.

While on his mission he had met a Sister Missionary by the name of Idie (can’t remember her maiden name).  She was of Polynesian descent and they had become friends.  After they had both returned from their missions, they met up in the Salt Lake area and became more than friends.  By the time I returned from my mission they were engaged and preparing to marry.  The wedding was held in the Salt Lake Temple and the reception was a traditional Polynesian one with the pig and all.  The food and the entertainment was great.  One of those weddings you remember for a long time.

Over the next couple of years, Miff and I did not talk much, but my mother kept me informed as to what was happening in his life.  Miff and Idie seemed to be happy and they had two baby boys and all seemed to be going in their favor.  Then I think Miff’s past started creeping back into his life.  While growing up on the reservation he had experienced and participated in Homosexuality.  All these urges started coming back and he found himself participating in activities that were not conducive to his marriage with Idie.  My mother had many a conversation with Idie and they both were doing all they could to help Miff in his life choices.  But in the end, that was not enough, and Miff made the choice to not be married.  He and Idie were divorced, which devastated both Idie and my mother.  Miff then moved to New York.  I am not sure if my mother continued talking with him or not.  After some time, Idie fell in love again, was married and moved to Arizona.  My mother stayed in contact with Idie for  a few years, but eventually that also ended.

A few years later, I received a call from my mother.  She told me that Miff was moving back to Salt Lake and that he had AIDS.  He was coming back to convalesce, because he was dying.  My mother, who was living in Salt Lake at the time, would go and visit with him every week.  She asked me to go with her once and I refused.  The way I saw it at the time, he had made his bed, let him lie in it.  I had a less than forgiving heart, of which I am now ashamed.

I didn’t understand Miff’s life, what he had grown up with, what he had experienced, nor did I have the decently to find out.  All I could see was that he made a poor choice and that choice put him where he was now.   He would have to live and die with that choice.

How naive I was.  Granted, I was in my twenties and young.  Life had not given me all those learning experiences that give us understanding and empathy for others.  I had been raised in a loving home, been taught righteous desires and choices (not that all my choices were thus).  I believed that all should live this way and any deviation was their own fault.  But with years of questionable choices under my belt, I now realize how selfish I had been and how I had not understood what I had been teaching for years, that the Atonement of Christ heals all.

I have recently read a book that has shed some light on what it is like to grow up as a Native American on a reservation.  The book, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”, written by Sherman Alexie, is his biography of growing up on a reservation is Washington State.  I now realize that the LDS Church had great intentions in giving these Native American children a better life, but to change a way of thinking that has been around for years is asking a lot of these children.  As I stated earlier, the program had a lot of success stories, but the tragedy would come to the families that had loved these children and then watched them return to the old ways.  The tragedy was to watch Miff make a choice we did not understand, and then watch that choice take his life.  What a heartbreak it was for my mother, who loved Miff until the day he died and still has soft spot for him in her heart.  What a lesson I learned on forgiveness, not only for Miff’s choice, but for my choice to not go and see him.

I would like to end this story with the following thought:  No matter the difficulty, no matter the hatred, no matter the pain, no matter the wronged, in the end remember, Love and Forgiveness will overcome all.  I have written this story with a tear in my eye, understanding now the pain and suffering Miff must have gone through knowing that his choice had separated him from his family, and also knowing that those tendencies he had learned as a child are not easily forgotten or changed.  Then knowing that he was dying because of that choice and would pretty much being doing it alone, except for the love a woman he had not met until his senior year of high school.  I am not sure what relationship he had with his own mother and family, but what I do know is that my mother loved him until the end.  I now believe that our hearts are not so small, that there is not room for one more person to love in this life.