Lenae's Life Sketch/Eulogy by Julene Lillywhite Weaver

To begin I just want to clear one thing up so that no one here is thinking, “who on earth are these crazy people talking about?” To her family and a few random friends, Lenae was always known as neither “Weed” which seems like an ill-fitting name because she was neither scraggly nor unwanted nor a pothead. Every kid in our family has a nickname and our given names were only used if we were in big trouble. Here, in our older brother’s words is how Lenae became Weed:

“On my grandpa’s farm, there used to be large patches of a weed called common mallow. You’ve probably seen it growing in your lawn or garden and cursed it. But as kids, we loved it. Just before the seed pods ripen, they turn into sweet little round green buttons. We used to sit in the weed patches and eat as many as we could find. We didn’t know that the weeds were called mallow. To us, they were “goody weeds.” My little sister was sweetest of all of us, so one day Grandpa started calling her his little goody weed. The nickname stuck, and over time it changed to Weed. One thing that didn’t change, though, was the fact that Weed was one of the sweetest, kindest people you will ever meet.

Weed is the daughter of Paul and Bonnie Lillywhite and number 4 in our family of 8 kids. The oldest was our sister, Lou, then came our brother, Jay, then our sister, Ferf, then Weed, then yet another girl—me, Juge, and finally our three “little” brothers, Moss, Supe and Bean. We moved from Farmington, New Mexico to St. George when Weed was six.

Weed was just 18 months older than me and we shared a pretty idyllic childhood.

We shared so much fun together and with our other siblings, cousins and friends: playing with babies, Barbies and paper dolls, raising kittens, making yarn dolls, wearing dress-ups made by mom, playing bury-in-the-blanket, setting butterfly traps (which were always unsuccessful), hiding in forts under our grapevines, running barefoot all summer—every summer, swinging on rope swings made in our trees by Dad, swimming at Green Valley, making endless buckets of mud to play in, and sliding on bags down the moss-covered gutters on Main Street hill.

The summer before Weed was in 4th grade our family moved to Pennsylvania for a year.   It was a bit like a year-long vacation for us kids. There we all loved playing in our stream, perfected our cherry drops and other tricks on the branches of our climbing trees (Weed was always braver and better at them than any of us). We caught lighting bugs and played kick-the-can, king of the rock, and Annie I over.

We moved back to sunny St. George the next summer.  I was reading through my journal the other night from that year, when Weed was 11 ½ and I had just turned 10. I wrote, “last night I peed the bed.” Poor Weed. She and I shared a queen size bed at the time. I totally remember I hadn’t done that in ages and was shocked. It wasn’t too long ago that Weed and I were reminiscing about this ill-fated event. I said, “Remember when I convinced you to help me put clean sheets on the bed and hide the wet ones in our closet thinking we could sneak them into the washer on wash day without Mom finding out?” As we laughed about it and how mom was not pleased finding wet sheets in our closet, Weed said something like, “I can’t believe I wet the bed when I was that old!” In her memory she was the wet bandit. I laughed so hard and reminded her it was actually me who did the wetting. She was just so nice she’d pretty much take the blame anytime there was a question as to who was in the wrong.

During that time period we were busy playing spies, runaways, drug dealers (that one was clearly my idea) and Indians (usually subsisting on a diet of goody weeds through our adventures). We played horses, skated, rode bikes, played basketball and jump rope, and all slept out in the backyard. Weed had started drawing horses, and after perfecting that, moved on to drawing people. I’m sure you’ve seen just how good she got at that. We loved trips to the beach and Disneyland, Washington DC, Mount Rushmore, Colorado and lots of fun around Southern Utah camping, hiking and picnicking as a family.

She had fun in middle school and high school, where she made an amazing group of friends who are fun and kind women like her. She did awesome academically, played sports, rocked it in her art classes and got chased by lots of guys. Once in a while, when she’d had enough of hearing from one of the guys on the phone, she’d pass it to me and I’d keep talking as if I were her and no one was the wiser. We’d just cover the mouthpiece while we busted up. Don’t worry Derek, that never happened with you.

Weed has always had an amazing smile, laugh, and sense of humor! One of our cousins wrote, “I remember as a kid thinking, ‘how could someone who is so very pretty be so goofy?!’” She is fun and funny. Ask anyone who went to girls’ camp with her. She was just so pretty and then out of her would come these thunderous burps that would put any guy’s attempt to shame. She had a deal with a friend that if she could go two weeks without these belches he’d take us both out to dinner. I got a filet minion out of Weed’s hilarious talent/habit. One day after one of our mom’s delicious dinners Weed stood up, rubbed her tummy, and announced accidentally, “I’m as full as a fool can get!” She was miffed when we all busted up laughing, protesting that that was not what she had meant to say. We all thought it was so cute and funny that it became an often-used statement in our family and Weed laughed right along with us. She made us laugh with her funny remakes of song lyrics, with her crazy faces, and just with her infections laugh. She laughed when you laughed and made everything more fun.

I think our childhood prepared Weed to be an amazing wife and mother. She married Derek when she was 19 in the St. George Temple.   Together they have lived in St. George, Provo, Tooele and St. George again. A friend wrote in a letter “Derek gave a talk in church once and referred to Lenae as his angel wife.” I love that he called her that. Lenae loved spending time with him, helping him in any way she could and is so proud of his many talents and accomplishments.

Derek and Weed have four amazing kids, Kaebri, Tasia, Zade, and Trigg. They are each so unique and special. It took seven pregnancies, each one extremely difficult, to bring their kids-here-on-earth into their family. I think Weed loved making sacrifices for her kids because she loved them so much. She spent hours and hours (mostly the wee hours of the night) sewing elaborate Halloween costumes of the kids’ choosing. She made them all without patterns, just using her creativity and sweet skills to create masterpieces. She made every holiday fun and special for her family.   She loved spending time with her kids. When we talked on the phone she’d be giggling as she jumped on the tramp with Trigg and I always knew that as soon as her kids or Derek got home from school it was time to hang up because she wanted to hear all about their days.   She may have yelled about Saturday’s work now and then, but mostly because she just wanted to get it done so they could get out and do something fun together. Weed loved taking the kids to the park or hiking or to roll around in the mud at the river. Weed was the mom and aunt who always made all the kids laugh with her tickles and silly teases—teases that made kids feel loved and special and got them giggling like crazy.

Weed may have been pretty, but she was not prissy (except maybe where spiders were concerned).   She was a hard worker, tackling every sort of job around her house from building rock columns, including lugging around 80 pound sacks of cement, to moving tons of dirt to get the yard ready for grass. Her purse, usually a pretty tiny one, was packed with anything you could need from lip-gloss to a knife, screwdriver or firearm. She was bold in standing up for things she believed in strongly.

Weed had some pretty tough times with hospital stays for herself and several of her kids, crazy hard pregnancies, three devastating miscarriages, and some pretty severe hearing loss (which no one realized existed until Derek figured it out shortly after they were married). It was tough for her to go through surgeries and try to deal with hearing aids and to have decreasing ability to hear her kids’ sweet voices. She had struggles that she didn’t really talk about because she’d never want to burden others and was a very private person.

I think because of those hard times and because of the very nature of her soul, she was able to live the essence of the scriptures in Mosiah 18 that tell us that we need to be: “willing to bear one another’s burdens, mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”

Many people have expressed how much they appreciated her ability to empathize. In each place she and Derek lived she made friends who she was able to comfort and mourn with during their hard times. She was very Christ-like in her ability to do that and I feel like in so doing she completed the rest of that scripture: “to stand as witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life.”

Weed’s empathy extended beyond mourning and comforting others. I think that scripture should also include “rejoice with those that rejoice” which is sometimes the hardest to do of them all. Probably my very favorite thing about Weed was her ability to do that. Anytime I told her about something happy or exciting in my life she was even happier about it than I was. I know she was like that with everyone around her. She truly found joy in others’ happiness. Derek found a sign near her bedside lamp that said, “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” I know she is feeling the sunshine she shared with all of us.

Weed loved doing things for people to celebrate them. Just before our first baby was born, my husband and I moved back up north to Salt Lake, which was pretty tough for me. For my birthday several months later I decided I wanted to go camping and invited Weed’s family and Jay who all lived up north too. We camped at Deseret Peak out past Tooele. Weed came with little Kaebri and Tasia even though Derek wasn’t able to, packing up their tent and all their gear. Not only did she come, but she made me a fancy version of my favorite cake and brought a cooler full of ice cream packed with dry ice so I could have cake and ice cream to celebrate my birthday. Camping with small kids is seriously hard work. Yet here is Weed, bringing her two little ones, just to help make my day special. She did that kind of thing for everyone.   Just last year at Lou’s 40th birthday party Weed showed up with the most gorgeous lemon layer cake and cupcakes, made with real lemons and decorated with raspberries and mint leaves that she had spent the entire day making. You’re lucky I wasn’t in charge of dessert that night, Lou.

Probably the story from our childhood that Weed and I laugh about the most was when we were about 7 and 8 years old. We had a friend over, but she wasn’t playing the way we wanted and we were getting bugged. When she threw our Fisher Price cash register across the room it was the final straw. We shoved her down the hall and locked her in “the dungeon,” an old cellar with a cement floor, ceiling and walls (that Jay slept in). My mom heard her yells and came to her rescue, grounding Weed and I for the first and only time in our lives. We were not allowed to play with friends for a whole week. We pretended we felt punished but were really laughing behind mom’s back thinking it wasn’t a punishment at all since we were best friends and preferred playing with each other over other friends anyway. We always felt that way about our siblings. They were our best friends.   Since then, things have changed and not changed. Weed remained my best friend. No matter how lonely I was when I moved to a new place and had no friends, I knew I could call Weed and tell her about it and laugh with her. I hope I was always there for her too when she needed a friend.   But we have also added friends to our circles, friends who are like family and who have been there for each of us when we needed them. Friends who will miss Weed the way I will miss her.

When we would paint each other’s nails as kids I could never understand why Weed’s nails were always dirty underneath even when mine weren’t (didn’t we do all the same things?).   Surprisingly, as we grew up that never changed. She could wash a kitchen full of dishes and still have dirt under her nails. We used to laugh and laugh about it. When we went to help prepare her prettiness for the funeral Derek and I noticed that there was dirt under her nails which just seemed so fitting and made us both laugh. A lot has been said, and will be said, about Weed’s perfections. She had her imperfections too and they helped us love her. Sometimes it is our imperfections that make us perfect.

Weed’s world was Derek and their kids and she was their world. On Monday I had the special experience of sitting in on a family home evening with Derek and the kids as they worked on Lenae’s obituary, trying to put into words who she was to them. It’s been difficult for all of us who loved her (husband, children, family and friends) to find the words to describe her. As I lay awake a few mornings ago, the words of Corinthians came into my mind as the perfect descriptions of how she lived.

1 Corinthians 13

4. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8. Charity never faileth.

Weed was charity. We miss her so much.

10. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

12. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

We look forward to the day when we will again see her face to face.