My eulogy for my mother

 In Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 2, 1949, Coralee Jaynes was born to Homer Warren Jaynes, Jr. and Thelma Louise Wood Jaynes. When she was two years old, they moved to Nevada.  My mother was the oldest of five children.  Her brothers Warren, Richard, Fred and sister Mary have always been an important part of her life. From a young age, her hard working parents taught them to work and to serve.  At first her family lived in Starr Valley and Coralee rode the same bus to Wells to go to school as our dad.  When she was in elementary school, her grandpa wrote a teasing message in her autograph book about “that Dahl boy.”  She cried until he changed it.  When she was 12 years old, her family moved to Wells.  While she was waiting for her younger sister, Mary, to grow up and become a friend, she developed close relationships with her cousins and made many lifelong friends at school.  Eventually, she came around to “that Dahl boy,” and she and my dad became high school sweethearts.  

After high school, she went to BYU where she studied accounting and our dad went to cow camp and served a mission.  In 1970, they were married in the Salt Lake Temple.  They lived in Provo briefly while my mom finished her degree.  From there, they moved back to Starr Valley, where they have made their home ever since.

Our mother loved accounting and passed the CPA exam, but her greatest desire was to be a full-time wife and mother. Our dad worked as a cowboy and eventually a silversmith and bit and spur maker.  Through the ups and downs of starting a business and being a starving artist, she stood shoulder to shoulder with our dad, with support and encouragement.  Their marriage is the kind of partnership I aspire to.

She blessed her children’s lives by giving her full attention to raising them. Our mother was a natural-born teacher.  She taught us to love books with hours of read aloud time nestled by her on the couch or in the car while our dad drove.  She taught us poetry and art appreciation and piano lessons and she taught my sisters and me to bake bread and to sew and quilt.  It’s not her fault that I’m not a good seamstress because she tried.

A big proponent of “work before play” and “any job worth doing is worth doing well,” she taught us to work. 

Our mother homeschooled my brothers and Olivia for parts or all of elementary school.  I think she would have homeschooled all of us if she’d had the idea earlier. She applied the tenacity and strong will she brought to everything else in her life to homeschooling.  Following her example, many of us have homeschooled our own children.  I know my mother never would have traded the extra time with her children she was gifted by homeschooling. 

Later, when we were mostly grown, our mother became a business teacher at Wells High School.  It was kind of a good news/bad news situation for my brothers who were still in high school.  She was there to witness their shenanigans.  Later, she enjoyed working as an accountant in Elko at McMullin McPhee.

Through all the busyness she surrounded herself with, she somehow found time to make wedding and graduation quilts for her children and baby blankets, receiving blankets, graduation afghans, doll blankets and doll clothes for her grandchildren.  It often seemed to me like my mother had an inexhaustible store of energy.  When our youngest baby was born, she came to stay with us and help.  She took excellent care of us, cooking and cleaning and tending to all of us. With all of that work, she still had my husband, Adam, drive her to the craft store to get a project because she needed more to do.

Coralee served in various positions as a member of the Church, including a mission in Nauvoo. She and my dad dressed in period clothing, (which was basically my dad’s regular clothing).  My dad worked with the horses and they both gave tours and participated in shows.  As in every stage of their lives, they made dear friends through that service.

She loved serving on the committee that wrote the Humboldt Stake History.  She was also thrilled to be part of the Elko Temple Committee. Temple attendance was an important part of her life. When we were growing up and going to Salt Lake to visit my grandma, have our braces tightened, or shop for school clothes, serving in the temple was always part of the trip for my parents.  Since the dedication of the Elko temple and as long as her health allowed it, my parents had a standing weekly temple appointment.  My mom would get teary whenever she talked about the blessing it was to have a temple so close.

Her most cherished roles were wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She strived to connect with all of her grandchildren.  When the oldest were small, there was a Grandma Party every summer.  She had tea parties and made waffles with granddaughters and mailed her best paper airplanes to Boston after he moved to Oregon.  Once grandchildren graduated from high school, they got a weekly email from her.

She took every opportunity to teach her grandchildren, regardless of her circumstances. She taught piano lessons, keyboarding, computers, crochet, and accounting lessons, either in person or virtually.  During covid, she offered virtual lessons to anyone interested.  When our youngest son, Mark, decided to take accounting lessons, our other two children cautioned him that Grandma’s lessons were really hard.  They weren’t wrong, but her teaching blessed all of their lives.  

The best instruction she gave us was her example of righteous devotion.  Our mother taught us the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

When faced with discouragement, she knew where to go for help.  She had some small, yellowed with age, pieces of paper with quotes on them.  Sometimes they were tacked to the wall by the washing machine and sometimes they were in a drawer, but they became part of who she was.  Both quotes are from Elder George Q Cannon.

In 1864, he said:

I know that everything will be overruled for our good if we do right.  No matter how difficult circumstances may be to bear at the time, they are for our good, and God watches over us; His angels are round about us all the time.

In 1884, he said:

Therefore, however dark the prospects may be, however gloomy, let us remember that He who sits on high knows our condition, and that He can deliver us.

Her faith in and desire to follow Jesus Christ was a blessing to everyone around her.  These past several years, as she experienced the effects of her cancer and treatments, her faith and courage lifted me.  I had the chance to spend a week with her in Carson City a few years ago when she went there for treatment. Ever the teacher and wanting to enrich my life, she had brought a brochure about historical homes in Carson City she thought we might want to learn about while we were there.  It felt like the most Coralee Dahl thing she could have done.  At her treatment sessions, she was friends with all the other patients and knew their stories. I will always remember watching her walk into those appointments.  She had her oxygen in tow and I knew and she knew that the treatment wasn’t going to be easy, but she squared her shoulders and walked resolutely, never shrinking.  I recall thinking, she is the strongest person I know.

She constantly expressed her faith and trust in the Lord.  She repeated over and over, “This life isn’t the reward, it’s the test.”

Her final teaching to all of us is the most important one.  Like Helaman’s stripling warriors, we have been taught by our mother.

We do not doubt our mother knew it.

I know, like my mother, that Heavenly Father loves us.  I know Jesus is the Christ.  I know that because of temple covenants we can be together forever.  I have never been more grateful for that truth.