Michael Joshua

Joshua's life began poetically, symbolically for me.  His homecoming from Bethel to Hooper Bay village was HAPPY and felt well-deserved.  It was like a celebration. Eskimo children gathered to see the arrival of the new Gussuk baby. Bundled in a traditional sled behind the noisy snowmobile, I snuggled him under blankets and canvas tarps as we drove from the little Hooper Bay air strip.  When we pulled up behind our house, Mrs.Bell ran out importantly and took the baby out of my arms. I remember thinking that in her mukluks, he couldn't be safer. She and Kathy Inman let the children come in, three or four at a time, to see him. What a HAPPY time.

And he grew up a wonderful, beautiful boy. In Riverside before he could talk he coaxed me from the kitchen to the LR window to see a sunset.

Haley's comet - Frank Zullo

From the beginning he was honest.  GG told me how she had praised him for doing some little trick in her back yard.  "You did it! " she applauded.  "No, I didn't," he said solemnly, and kept trying.  As he got older, he just naturally wanted to help everyone.  He was always happy so it was hard to know when he needed help himself.

In St. George in second grade, he touched me when he gave me a Christmas corsage.  He had walked or ridden a bike to May's Flower Shop, come home and hidden his gift under his bed. But before Christmas, toddler Jared came across it and brought it to me, wondering. Josh fought back tears and took it back to hide while I tried to assure him that I hadn't seen it--not really; not very well. (I'd already seen it under the bed while cleaning, but when I realized what it was I carefully put it back.) I wore the corsage every Christmas, and even brought it with me to Mendon.

By the time he was in Scouts he liked stars, and on one of his first camp-outs he was on the lookout for Haley's comet while all of the boys and most of the adults were unaware until he showed them. "Haley's smudge."

So many other things.  I thought he watched too much TV but gradually realized he was thinking about movies. The same with music. He was an excellent swimmer but wasn't competitive in the usual way, so in more than one race we saw him look back at his opponent and slow down so he didn't win by too much.

Roxcy's arrival.

He loved new things, challenges.  Took the whole family rapelling for FHE, patiently teaching everyone.

Then there was the time teenage Josh was forbidden from going to Gunlock with his friends, but he went anyway.  When he got home I gave him the requisite lecture. He listened patiently, and as he went to leave said, "Oh!  And on our way to the lake we gave a kid CPR at the gas station. He was having a seizure and his mom was calling for help."

Another time I came home from shopping, irritated about my treatment at the hands of a frustrating store clerk.  After hearing my complaint, Joshua said, as if looking for clarification, "So you are better than the clerk?"

The older he got, the more I loved talking with him. Music.  Ideas. And always an interesting viewpoint, always thinking on a kinder, higher level.  With Fumbling Planets, it wasn't his singing I remember so much as the lyrics he came up with, each one a poem.

The night he got his mission call, after the hoopla died down and everyone left, Dad and I sat in the kitchen together, basking in the afterglow.  "I'm happy," Dad said--and we were.  Josh's time in Columbia, wonderful for him, was hard for me, the first child to be so far away for so long.

After his mission he spoke to the YW and in the Q&A one of the girls made fun of a boring date she had been on recently.  Josh said, "I don't know. I thought we had an OK time..."  The stake leaders invited him to go and speak in other wards.  

In later years in the family, he was always on the lookout for anyone left out.  Reaching out. So much talent in so many areas.  I love you, Josh.