Dad was the one who brought us forth that first morning, me and Chester and our sisters, Ida and Jane. We’d all been buried decades ago in the Newdale cemetery. Chester and I, just a year apart, had died in 1959 and 1960; Ida in 1966; and Jane, the youngest, in 1970. Everyone from Newdale had come forth, the city of the dead becoming a throng of the living. The sky above was an azure vision, the earth renewed, the grass and trees like a childhood dream. Cousins and neighbors, friends and former enemies, the women so beautiful, the men so handsome. We talked and laughed and wept, marveling at what it all meant. One moment we were bound in the world of spirits, and the next we were alive in the body, risen from the grave, through Him who had been the first fruits of them that slept. Somehow we knew it was happening around the world, souls coming forth by priesthood authority, remembering those who had gone before, and calling them forth too.
In mortality, Dad had given up drinking on his thirty-second birthday, after surviving a rattlesnake bite, and ever after he honored his priesthood. He was the first person I saw as he performed the ordinance of resurrection, the very elements of matter coming together in the air to clothe my spirit forever. Mom stood beside him, more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen, with her hair so red and eyes so bright and blue—my own Mom, but youthful and glorified. Dad and the other brethren taught me the ordinance, and I brought forth my wife, Lily, and our children—Jennette, Lottie, and Sam. My sweet Lily! I held her for so long, her head on my shoulder as we cried for joy. I never knew I could feel a love so exquisite, body and spirit inseparably joined in a fullness of being.
Some of the dead were brought forth as little children, those who had passed before the age of accountability, resurrected and hurried into the arms of their parents. Mortals were there too, survivors of the horrors of the last days, those who someday will be changed to immortality in the twinkling of an eye when they reach “the age of a tree,” as the scriptures promise. We all knew what was before us: a thousand years of peace with Christ as King of Kings. So much work to do! But we were fit and ready.
In the distance, I saw a tree on the edge of the old irrigation canal, the same tree Chester and I had climbed a thousand times as boys. On Saturday afternoons, Chester and I would play in that canal and climb that tree, our young bodies buzzing and aching for activity. When I became an old man—a diabetic with bone spurs on my feet and stooped shoulders—I would long for those childhood days, playing with Chester at that tree.
From my twenties, I’d lived with a bad knee from a wound on the battlefield in France. When I was thirty, I lost two fingers to the gears of a potato harvester. Now I had those fingers restored, and all those old aches and pains were gone. I felt young again, like on those summer Saturdays, climbing that tree with Chester.
Standing there as people talked, watching Lily and our children with her parents, I shook out my arms and jangled my shoulders. With the slightest effort, I squatted down once and stood up straight. This new body felt like a miracle—which it truly was.
Glancing around, I saw others getting the same spirit. Phineas Harper was doing jumping jacks. Evelyne Stringham—I’d known her only as old Mrs. Stringham the schoolteacher—was doing cartwheels on the grass. Charles Parsnip, who had been crippled all his life with polio, was dancing a jig as his friends laughed and clapped.
I called out for Chester. “Chester, get over here,” I hollered above the chatter of the crowd.
And he ran to me. He ran like a teenage boy.
“See that tree?” I asked, pointing to our old friend.
“Oh! I know that tree,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
“Race you!” I said.
And we both took off in an instant.
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