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BOUNTIFUL — Most of Sister Kathleen Johnson Eyring's 65 grandchildren and great-grandchildren sang "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" on Saturday during her funeral, a moment a son called a reflection of everything that she loved and invested in.
The themes of eternal life and eternal families dominated the hourlong tribute to Sister Eyring, the wife of President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She died Sunday, Oct. 15, at age 82.
President Russell M. Nelson, president of the church, who is recovering from a back injury, did not attend the funeral, but shared a tribute about Sister Eyring during a First Presidency meeting this week and asked his first counselor, President Dallin H. Oaks, to read it while President Oaks presided over the funeral.
President Nelson said he spoke for all church members when expressing to the family the deepest love and compassion at a sacred time.
"Kathleen is an elect daughter of God who did everything she came to earth to do," President Nelson wrote. "That is a cause for celestial celebration. Kathleen made covenants with God. She kept those covenants. She was true and faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ every day of her life."
About 100 members of the Eyring family were joined at the funeral by dozens of friends, including Elders Jeffrey R. Holland, Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Elder Lance B. Wickman, an emeritus General Authority Seventy and general counsel for the church.
"We are met here to pay tribute to one who has lived a remarkable life, a worthy example for all of us to study and to emulate," President Oaks said.
The funeral was held on a brilliant fall morning topped with blue skies and white clouds at the Maple Hills Chapel in Bountiful foothills covered with autumnal reds, browns, greens and yellows. The chapel is home to the Mueller Park 5th Ward, in Bountiful, Utah, where Sister Eyring worshipped for 45 years.
Sister Eyring, who suffered from memory loss for the final years of her life, died as she listened to the remote broadcast of the 5th Ward singing the closing hymn of Sunday's Sacrament meeting, "Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer."
"For the first time in nine years, her bedroom was perfectly still, except for the sound of these friends' voices," said Mary Eyring, a daughter who read the hymn's final verse:
Precious Savior, dear Redeemer,
Thou wilt bind the broken heart.
Let not sorrow overwhelm us;
Dry the bitter tears that start.
Curb the winds and calm the billows;
Bid the angry tempests cease.
Precious Savior, dear Redeemer,
Grant us everlasting peace.
"Millions have prayed for Kathleen Eyring, for President Eyring, for your entire family," President Oaks said. "Most often we have prayed for the will of our Heavenly Father to be realized in her life. Now we acknowledge the answer to our prayers, and give thanks for the experience related by family members who were present: At the moment of her death, she reached up and greeted that moment with a radiant smile."
President Oaks recalled the death of his first wife, Sister June Oaks, 25 years ago.
"I knew that I would miss her companionship," he said, "but I did not know how keenly I would miss the responsibility of caring for her. That period of adjustment is a hit for each of you, but most keenly for your father, our dear associate in the work of the Lord. You will continue to be in our prayers as you grieve over this separation and adjust to this new circumstance."
John Eyring joined Mary at the pulpit to speak on behalf of Sister Eyring's six children. They said their mother centered her life and theirs on Jesus Christ.
"Toward the end of her life, her memories began to slip," Mary said, "but her family and the nurses who became like family noticed that her ability to remember the Savior seemed to increase as the years went by. After a lifetime of quiet, consecrated discipleship, the Savior was more than a memory for her. Her devotion to him was her past, present and future.
"During challenging years she endured with unfathomable strength and grace, she tested and proved the Savior's promise."
Each of the speakers said that the key to understanding Sister Eyring was to know that she was dedicated to following the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
"It was her compass, and she intuitively went where it pointed," Elder Wickman said.
In fact, Sister Eyring, who was born in San Francisco on May 11, 1941, enrolled at Cal-Berkeley because of such a prompting. For the same reason, she also spent a summer at Harvard, where she met President Eyring.
"The first time dad saw mom, he thought, 'If I could just be with her, I could become every good thing I've ever wanted to be,'" John Eyring said. "Together, our parents did become every good thing we could ever imagine. Like our father, we so want to be with our mother again, and we so much want to become all the good things she hoped and knew that we could be."
President Spencer W. Kimball married them in the Logan Utah Temple on July 19, 1962.
"The portents of that match," Elder Wickman said, "and its eventual impact on the work of the Lord in this dispensation, could not then have been imagined."
President Oaks said another prompting awoke Sister Eyring one night while President Eyring was a successful professor at Stanford. She woke her husband and asked, "Are you sure you are doing the right thing with your life?"
President Eyring received a confirming prompting himself the next morning, President Oaks said, and within a week, he "was offered the position of president of what was then Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, a location he had never visited and a responsibility he knew very little about."
From Ricks, now BYU-Idaho, President Eyring became an associate commissioner of Church Education, a member of the Presiding Bishopric, a general authority seventy, an apostle and a counselor in the First Presidency.
Sister Eyring was an athlete. She was a golfer, a skier and, with President Eyring, once won the tennis doubles championship at Ricks, where she also launched a women's softball league on a field outside Lincoln Elementary School. The women played after dropping their children off for classes.
"In the third grade, I could look up and through the window see my mother crushing softballs outside," said her oldest child, former BYU-Idaho President Henry J. Eyring.
Sister Eyring was captain of the tennis team, student body president and valedictorian at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, where a friend and classmate was the future singer Grace Slick. In addition to Harvard and Berkeley, where she earned a degree in political science, Sister Eyring also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Vienna, learning both French and German.
She wrote a novel, "Who Wants to Be a Nobody," that won the first prize for a juvenile book in the Utah Arts Council's 1983 creative writing competition.
Sister Eyring was also a painter.
"Mom is an artist in her own right," said her daughter-in-law, Kelly Eyring, "but that isn't well-known because she spent all of her time 'painting children.'"
They were the reason for her prompting about President Eyring's career. She was concerned about raising her children in the Bay Area.
"Rexburg was very, very important for our family," Henry J. Eyring said.
After having four boys — Henry, Stuart, Matthew and John — there were miscarriages before two girls came along, Elizabeth Eyring Peters and Mary Kathleen Eyring. Now there are 34 grandchildren and 31 great-grandchildren.
The Latter-day Saint belief in the possibility of being reunited as an eternal family was weaved throughout the service.
"When young Hal Eyring and Kathleen Johnson were sealed in the Logan temple on July 27, 1962, they set in motion a family that will thrive throughout eternity," President Nelson wrote in his tribute. "In time, Hal and Kathleen will experience the fullness of joy that God has in store for his faithful children. Their lives will be filled with never-ending happiness. And one day each of us, if worthy, shall again see the glorified, redeemed, exalted and perfected Kathleen Johnson Eyring, sister, saint, wife, mother and daughter of the living God."
President Oaks said, "The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is central to what the prophets have called the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death. ... The resurrection of our Savior ensures the resurrection of each of us who has lived upon this earth. What a glorious reality.
"A comforting consequence," he added, "is that dear ones who have advanced to the spirit world would continue to be concerned with family members who remain in mortality."
Sister Eyring's children called her their angel mother and said her death brought new stories of her goodness to their knowledge as those she served shared stories of how she ministered to them privately.
Mary Eyring said her mother knew Jesus Christ and taught her children to trust him and his gospel.
"We know she would have the Savior, and not herself, be the focus of our lives, our exemplar and the end of all our goals," she said.
"It is a gospel of happiness, and living it is the only sure path to peace, safety and happiness," Mary added. "God lives and he loves us," she added. "He sent his Son to make it possible for us to return to live with him forever in family."
The Eyring children said they believe they can still access the love she shared.
"What a joyful relief it was, after mom passed away, for us to walk up into her bedroom and find that the feeling we had loved there had not been her spirit but the Holy Ghost," John Eyring said. "She invited him, and the Father sent him to abide with his faithful daughter. Now he remains to comfort us, if we will continue to invite him and to qualify for his companionship as she did."
Mary Eyring said, "For a mother who pointed us toward the source of all relief, we are eternally grateful."
