I Didn't Get to Say Goodbye

I'm still reading David Archuleta's memoir Devout. This is part four of my response to that reading. David recently returned home from his mission after coming to terms with his father's abuse, but still wanting to learn more about his family. In doing so, David learned about a traumatic experience in his father's past.

Jeff - David's father - wrote in his journal: "I just learned my mom passed away…I really would like to be there for her funeral, but I think I need to follow the counsel of my mission president. He said I need to stay in Philadelphia and focus on what matters most."

I read that and literally exclaimed, "Fuck!!!"

This isn't just Jeff's story. It happened to me.

The Man I Couldn't Get Home To

My grandfather on my mom's side was a man I looked up to and admired. He used to drive me crazy giving me raspberries with a face full of scratchy stubble. He was also liberal with his advice — the kind of person who had something worth saying and wasn't stingy with it. He loved the outdoors, going on adventures, and spending time with his family.

I spent a lot of time with him in his woodworking shop. He made the desk at which I'm currently sitting as a high school graduation present. I'm looking at it as I write this.

He built things meant to last. I just didn't get to tell him that.

The Call

When I got the news, the call was brief. It wasn't even my mother or father on the other end — I think it was the mission president's wife. She told me, and I don't remember much of how I reacted.

His passing wasn't expected at all. There was no preparation, no slow goodbye, no chance to brace myself. Just a phone call in the middle of a mission that was supposed to be about everything except home.

A Funeral for One

I didn't go home for the funeral. I don't think I knew it was an option. I know that when I was called by the mission office to inform me, it wasn't presented to me. I wasn't even asked what I wanted.

While my main journal was lost, I kept a study journal as well, and on October 13, 2002, I wrote:

"In times of distress, the Lord can send us great comfort. I find great peace in beautiful music. Hymn 124, 'Be Still, My Soul' is one song in which I find great comfort. An arrangement of this hymn was sung by the choir while I was attending the missionary training center. At that time, it brought me comfort because I was away from home. Now, following the passing of my Grandpa, its calming melody calms my heart."

That was the funeral I had by myself, in a little room in an apartment where I studied each morning.

This is another instance where I want to have some charity for my younger self — he was doing the only thing he'd been taught. But reading those words now, I see a young man so thoroughly shaped by the framework that he didn't know he was alone in his grief and shouldn't have been. He thought the hymn was enough. The church had given him the hymn precisely so that it could be enough.

The Promise and the Price

A week later, on October 20, 2002, I wrote a quote from Gordon B. Hinckley into the same journal:

"If you serve a mission faithfully and well, you will be a better husband, you will be a better father, you will be a better student, a better worker in your chosen vocation. Love is of the essence of this missionary work. Selflessness is of its very nature. Self-discipline is its requirement. Prayer opens its reservoir of power."

There's the promise. And embedded in it, quietly, the message that shaped everything: the family you'll have someday is worth the sacrifice, but the family you have right now is not what matters most. Stay. Focus. The work is what matters most.

This was echoed by Jeff's mission president. It was echoed by the mission office that never asked me what I wanted. It was echoed by the man who held the title of prophet.

A Choice That Was Never Mine

I've written elsewhere about the way the church treats agency as something it grants rather than something you inherently possess. Obedience is the expectation, not choice. The rhetoric around agency is everywhere in Mormon theology, but in practice, the actual exercise of it is heavily managed. You choose — but only from the options the institution makes available to you.

Reading about Jeff Archuleta just drove that point home again.

Looking back now, I feel robbed of something important. I was robbed of my chance to see my grandfather one more time and say goodbye, even if he was already gone. I was robbed of my chance to choose. I might have chosen to stay — maybe I would have arrived at the same conclusion Jeff did. But I should have had the chance to make that call for myself.

I wasn't even asked what I wanted.

The fact that it wasn't even presented as an option tells you everything you need to know about where the missionary ranks in the church's hierarchy of concerns.

No Right to Expect This

Maybe what Hinckley said was right. Maybe, in the grand ledger of things, those years of service do make a person better. I'm not in a position to fully evaluate that claim about my own life. Or maybe it just means that people who thrive on missions are wired to thrive in high-pressure institutions.

But I think at the heart of it, demanding the sacrifice of a final goodbye is something the church has no right to require. There is no question the church could afford to fly missionaries home and then have them return. Any decent employer offers some kind of bereavement leave. A volunteer force — one that pays for the so-called privilege of serving — is denied it.

Look at the way it treats loss for vulnerable young people and tell me the LDS church isn't controlling, manipulative, and authoritarian.

I am sitting at the desk my grandfather built me. The thing that strikes me most isn't even the grief anymore. It's the clarity. The church took something from me and dressed the wound in scripture and song. It told me a hymn was enough. It told me the mission was what mattered most.

It was wrong. I should have been given the choice to put my family before my faith.