A Fond Farewell

A Fond Farewell & Loving Tribute.

Alleen (aka the Sage Hen) was taken from us on August 3, 2007. She was suddenly stricken with a broken blood vessel in her brain which quickly took her life. She felt very little pain and she went quickly.

I am going to miss my sweet wife, helpmate, confidant, and mother of my children. Alleen had a sense of humor that was witty and to some, hard to get. She would come home from teaching a Relief Society lesson and tell me how it had gone, and then she would tell me of one of her statements or jokes that she had told, then she would laugh as she described the look of the women’s faces as they tried to tell if she was joking or not, but the ones who knew her were trying to contain their laughter. I remember at my 20th high school reunion, one of my classmates was saying goodbye as we were leaving he said “It was nice to see you”, and Alleen said without missing a beat “It’s nice to be seen”. The classmate who was a lawyer just stared at us not knowing how to respond to her comment.

Alleen loved her family. She loved going to Star Valley to visit the Bowling’s and the Sorenson’s and her mom of course. She loved to get together with the Stott’s and she regretted not seeing the Draper’s as much as she wanted to. She loved her dad Alf, She would tell me about going on road trips to Idaho Falls or other places and how she would stay awake to talk to her dad so he wouldn’t get lonely while the others were asleep. Alleen always had her camera with her to take pictures of the kids, nieces and nephews. Holland and Ashlee were some of her favorite targets because of the closeness of the two with Logan. She loved to take pictures of raindrops on roses, the cat attacking the toilet paper roll, the sunset, the lone bush, rock, tree, or critter just sitting out by itself in a field. Her favorite subjects were Logan and Adam, Katie then Ginger (our cats).

Alleen loved being a reporter and writer. She was known for her non-biased opinions and reporting style for the paper. She hated being on the school beat because it made her feel very uncomfortable dealing with my employer and bosses. They really liked her, when I told one of the directors that they had replaced her with another reporter he said “Why I like her and I know that she was going to be fair and not try to create trouble.” She took her journalistic ethics very seriously and was never shy about letting me know when she saw another reporter abuse the ethics that she so deeply believed in.

Most people never saw the sensitive side of her; she took her duties of motherhood very seriously. When Alleen had just given birth prematurely (due to incompetent cervix) to our second son Duncan, and as the doctors and nurses were taking care of her, she held our little boy as his life was slowly passing from him she was sobbing an apology to him for not being able to protect him, and for letting him down by not carrying him to term. The nurse thought that she was apologizing to them for crying, but I knew who she was apologizing to and I wanted to tell the nurse to shut up because she just didn’t get how seriously Alleen took her job as protector and mother.

Goodbye and farewell my Alleen. I’ll miss you and I love you.
David