I met Anne when I joined Single Adult Choir. She told me her name and I said I know  some Drews. I told her that Nate and Emily Drew were in my ward. We were both sopranos and liked sitting with her she helped keep me on tune. We became really good friends and I really liked her. The whole choir will miss her but me in particular.She was so kind and always treated me special.

I met Anne when I was 18. (Claudia to others, but during the few years I knew her she went by Anne.) Anne was a single mom of eight who lived in Provo. I was a mentally ill BYU student who showed up at her doorstep because I couldn't deal or communicate with my own parents. And then, just like that, I lived at 3336 N Canyon Rd too.

I'd never met a person like her before. A person who would just take someone in. I'd thought that only happened on TV. I was not a delightful, helpful, aware teenager either-- I was pretty selfish and oblivious. At the time, I was surprised by her generosity, but as I've grown older I've been even more humbled by it. (Anne wasn't yet 40 at the time, I'm 43 now, and I cannot imagine admitting a depressed teenager who would would sleep all day into my house.)

She was struggling to support her children after her divorce, working at the Provo library while trying to figure out how to go back to school and move beyond an AA degree, and there I was taking up space and eating her food. She bought me a green winter coat when she could have used that money in dozens of elsewheres.

But even more than all the material things she gave me, it was her example of love and emotional support that left the deepest mark in my life.

She loved her kids. No matter what.

Maybe you know lots of wonderful mothers and so those sentences will seem boring and not like revelations to you, but for me, she was like a mythical fictional creature. I’d never seen a family work like hers before. Of course her family had its problems and dysfunction-- whose doesn’t? But she had such unconditional love for her kids. They could do something wrong and she’d TALK to them about it and then they would work things out. I thought she was fantastic.

Shortly after I turned 19, in 1998, I married her son and we continued to live with her for a while before we got our own apartment. Then after he and I separated in 2001 and divorced in 2002, I went back to BYU to try and finish my degree and I still had contact with Anne and her family. If I hadn’t loved Anne so much, I think we would have divorced sooner. I was so sad I wouldn’t be part of his family anymore-- I liked all of his siblings (even Josh who I always argued with way too much since I was pretty immature for an adult, lol) but I especially loved Anne.

I did okay for a couple semesters at school but then when my divorce was final I fell apart and couldn’t keep a job again. I would have been literally living-on-the-streets-homeless if it wasn’t for Nathan seeing me and bringing me home to Anne. Who, of course, took me in AGAIN and helped me until the slow wheels of Social Security bureaucracy and Wasatch Mental Health got me into section 8 housing.

Even though I didn’t get to keep her, I’m so thankful for the conversations I did get to have with her. She was a wonderful person to talk to-- so thoughtful, a great listener, non-judgmental. She had a huge impact on my life. She was a wistful, creative, beautiful soul who loved books. She was incredibly loving and generous and forgiving. I’m a better human today because of her.

Even though I hadn’t spoken to the woman in almost twenty years, I’m sad for the world now that they’ve lost her too.

To all of her family, I'm sorry for your terrible loss. She was the kindest and most positive female influence I've ever had in my life ❤️