Funeral Talk-Angela

I know that there are many people all over the country who would have liked to attend the funeral services for Ammon. Because it wasn't possible for all who desired, I have decided to bring the funeral to all of you, as much as I can. I will post one talk at a time, over the next several days or weeks. I find comfort in the things that were said about my dear husband, but if it's too difficult for anybody else to read, I can understand that too. This talk was written by Angela, his older sister.

This is certainly something that I had not pictured myself doing. But I am glad to. I’m glad to have the opportunity to honor my brother who at one time seemed to live solely to annoy me but then grew into a man I was immensely proud of. Ammon came into my life when I was six, I had been the baby all that time, but I didn’t mind, I loved having a little baby brother. And boy was he cute! It was easy to show him off! I remember dressing him up when he was a toddler. Sometimes James would get in on it too and we’d dress him in a suit and have him carry a little brief case. He was my little doll. Maybe that’s why he tormented me later in life. As he grew he always stayed busy. Sometimes the things he did were amazing and other times frustrating. He hated to get his toe nails cut and so James and I invented plagues that would befall anyone who didn’t keep their toe nails clipped and that worked for a long time. We could tell him that he was going to get toe-jam or some other thing if he didn’t let us clip his nails. Any time spent with Ammon was a test to one’s imaginative abilities. You either had to try to keep up with his brain or come up with punishments that were crazy enough that he would be good in order to avoid them. This led to my parents coming home and finding my brother gagged and tied to a chair.
Ammon and I were both creative, considered friends of great importance and loved the beauty that is all around us. Sometimes it felt like he was trying to copy me, art, music and sports, but I figured out as we got older that he just liked some of the same things I did. Just at different levels. I could never, and never wanted to, match his level of passion for professional sports. He was great to have on my Trivial Pursuit team. He almost always knew the sports questions. My siblings and I could be an almost unbeatable team together at that game. We all have had our own different areas of strengths and interests. Alot of those areas overlapped, but God had given each of us our own area of strength. I will never play Trivial Pursuit the same way again. It will be as if a piece of the game is missing. I will also miss Ammon when we put puzzles together. Ammon coined the phrase “puzzle eyes” to describe our ability to look for and find within a reasonable amount of time, a puzzle piece we needed. Ammon said that he and I were the only ones in the family that had them.
I don’t know that I even need to say what a great friend Ammon was. All the people that have come here to honor him stand as a testament of that. He was always a steady friend, solid. He was their defender, their strength, and a listening ear. I know because he was all those things to me as well. And he was so much more than those things to his love, Victoria. She and I have hit it off from nearly the first time that we met. I say nearly because Ammon had been telling her how much fun I was but when I got there, to Utah, it had been a really long trip for me with my boys and I was drained and a bit cranky. I was able to show my true colors after I had gotten my kids to bed and we stayed up to play games. After that she became a dear friend to me. And I will be forever grateful to Ammon for grabbing her and pulling her into our family. In her God created his best match for Ammon. They were and will be one of the best matched couples I have ever seen.
One other area that Ammon and I had in common was our faith. At times we wondered away from it making excuses and wanting to know for our selves. But when we were done wandering we both had a testimony of our Savoir Jesus Christ and his atonement. I am grateful for that knowledge. It’s not something that someone gave me or something that someone explained to me, it’s something that I found on my own. Ammon did too, and it was a hard process for both of us. But it is also a big piece of what we are. If you want to aquire any of Ammon’s passion for life and love for others, look to his faith.
And so with that I share my testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that it is true, I know that this life is not all that there is. I know that we can live again and more importantly that we can live again as families for eternity.