In Loving Memory of Marjorie Belle Perry (1952-2024)

After a complicated illness, my mother, Marjorie Belle Perry, daughter of Betty Lee Tarble Turner, passed away surrounded by her loved ones. A proper obituary will appear. In the meantime, I would like to share some of my memories of my mother.

My love of reading and knowledge is actually my mother’s. My mother imbued me with her passion for solving mysteries and exploring ideas. Books were plentiful around the house, and some of my dearest memories as a little kid are going to the Logan Library with my mom to pick out new Boxcar Children or Pee Wee Scouts books. While I lost myself in the children’s section of the library, Marjorie would be enjoying herself on the other end of the library, amongst both the fiction and non-fiction. Throughout her life, Mom enjoyed the imagination and escape of novels.  Marjorie deeply valued creativity; many of the books we had around the house were gigantic tomes of art and art history, and sometimes we would flip through the books together and talk about the beautiful paintings and where they came from. Over the course of her life, she dabbled in every art form she could get her hands on, from illustration to creating her own beads and jewelry.

My mother’s deep curiosity extended to her love of language and linguistics. We made puns together, looked for playful double meanings, and shared interesting new words with each other. My mother spent countless hours teaching herself to read and speak Cherokee, despite having no familial connection to the tribe, and found great pleasure and fulfillment in tackling questions about the Mayan writing system. When I was learning Spanish in school, Marjorie loved to hear and practice the vocabulary with me. Language and writing were bridges to new places, new people, and my mom loved connecting with people to share a smile and a laugh, but also to share those deep and reverent and sometimes unspeakable emotions.

Marjorie was often ready to step into a wise teacher role, and Mom would sometimes visit as a guest teacher to my elementary school and lead the class in a lesson about art and culture. She wanted to teach her children to understand a diversity of cultural traditions, and because we lived in a neighborhood with religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity, there were many opportunities for her to teach by word and by example how to practice inclusion by extending dignity and love to everyone.

For example, I would sometimes go to a neighborhood friend’s house to play video games (She did not like that part! She did not like video games much, let alone a violent one like Street Fighter.). My friend’s family was Muslim and their home life was quite different from mine. When I asked Mom about the various ways in which we were different from my friend’s family, she always taught me to value and respect people who live different kinds of lives than we did, based on different beliefs about the world. It is only as I look back as an adult that I realize how much effort my mother put into teaching her children to understand how to see and hear not just through the stories of the Mormon church and culture, but through the stories of all of the different kinds of people we actually shared our little world of a neighborhood with. Marjorie was a cosmopolitan woman.

Perhaps this is why I felt safe, at the age of 14, revealing to her that I believed I was gay. At the time this was a devastating revelation – for me, as a devout Mormon child, but not for Marjorie. My mom loved me and treated me with kindness even as I hated myself for being unable to be the heterosexual Mormon man that I imagined she wanted me to grow up to be. How a parent reacts to a child’s coming out says a lot about what that parent truly values: their child, or their desires for their child. My mom’s main desire for me was for me to be happy, however I could make that happen for myself.

Before my mother’s health took a precipitous decline, I shared with her my desire to live with a different name and gender, and she accepted my queerness without hesitation. More than anything, in any conversation, my mother wanted me to know how deeply she loved me and how much I meant to her. She loved all of her children in this way: with an intensity and complexity that could seem to consume and exhaust her.

Nobody is perfect, including Marjorie. There were tough times, too. Her childhood was challenging. Sometimes home life was quite turbulent, which can cloud one’s memories. One of the things I value most about my mom is her willingness to engage in accountability. A sincere apology can be very healing, and Marjorie lived a complicated journey of self-understanding, apology, and healing. My mom taught me that if I believe I’ve done harm, that engaging in repair and accountability were noble and worthwhile things to do. Being accountable means learning healthy ways to wrestle with shame and judgment. I am proud of Marjorie for repeatedly rising to the challenge.

I will always love my mother, and I know she loved me. I honor my mother by remembering the values she taught me and sharing her spirit and passions with the people in my life, keeping her presence in the world by sharing it with others.

Thank you for letting me share my mom with you today.