A Loyal and Loving Marriage

Mother loved Daddy completely. He was the sun around which she rotated. She loved her children, too, but she loved us AFTER she loved him. She knew of his faults, better than any of us, but she accepted them and stood firmly at his side. He was an old-fashioned thinker as far as role identification and he had been raised as an only child, so he expected to be pampered and looked after, and she did it without complaint. That was probably her view of her role, too. She did all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, ironing, planning, and organizing of family life AND was his secretary/assistant in his business. They moved his insurance agency into an office close to our home so she could more conveniently do both. Daddy was a hard worker in his many business enterprises and Church service, but Mother ran the home and made his life easier.

I once complained to her about his long prayers, especially in Church meetings. I told her I thought she should ask him to give shorter prayers—that he was embarrassing! She told me that early in their marriage she, too, had been a little embarrassed by his prayers. After one particularly long prayer she finally determined she would talk with him. As she was leaving the meeting, a sister in the ward stopped her and with tears running down her cheeks told Mother how lucky she was to be married to such a fine man who had the Spirit with him and how much Brother McGrath had blessed her life. Mother told me she determined that very day that she would never correct him or criticize him in his church service. She suggested that I was the one with the problem and I should very quickly get over it.

I sometimes forget that through Daddy’s long years of Church service, both as a bishop and a member of the stake presidency, she would have spent many hours without him around. In my life I have been aware of many woman who struggle with their young families while their men serve in demanding callings. I have to admit that it was many years before I realized my own mother did it, too. That is partly because I was so much younger than my brothers and sisters that I didn’t see how the family functioned in their young years. It is also partly because she never accused, blamed or criticized his hours away from home…even in retrospect.

For much of my life at home it was just the 3 of us. By then Mother was in a position to go with Daddy to things. Rather than make him go off to a meeting in Safford by himself, for example, Mother and I would accompany him and wait in the car or meetinghouse lobby.