Near-Death Experience of Walter Peter Monson

Walter P Monson Family, 1917, New York City

L-R Weldon, Leona, Keyne, Lafe, Walt, Maurice, Venna, Walter, Blanche, Lysle

(Elna had died. Richard had not yet been born.)

An Experience of Walter Peter Monson’s

[Kris' Note:  Little Richard Monson is buried at Wasatch Lawn in the Arlington section in the front of the cemetery near his parents (Walter and Leona Monson).

This has been included in several books over the years, and the different book authors pick and choose what to include.  Grandfather discussed this with his friends, who included LeGrand Richards, James E. Talmage.  He wrote the account formally, and had his signature witnessed.  He wanted the world to know that this happened to him.  It was published in The Master's Touch by Duane Crowther, and Modern Miracles by Jeremiah Stokes.  

After all of the sad details, to me this is a happy account of a very real experience.  My grandfather attested to its reality until the day he died.  My father cried, of course, as he explained it the first time I ever heard it near Uncle Lafe's casket.

It’s a happy experience because it is full of promise, especially for those of us with departed children.  Another thing I love is the phrase, “As I turned my head in the direction I intended to go….”  That says a LOT to me.  Apparently he continued to make choices based upon his own will as an individual.

I am a late-life child of one of the younger children of this large family.  There are obvious disadvantages to being born into a family so late in that family’s arc – many had died already and those remaining were pretty old.  However, the sense of peer equality has always been there with my cousins, no matter their ages.  They are all kind, beautiful, handsome, musical, interesting, quirky, smart, accomplished, warm and hilarious and I feel honored to come from the same family.  The aunts and uncles I knew, Blanche, Weldon, Keyne and Lafe were magnificent characters, along with my own father.  I’m sure that my grandparents, my Uncle Walt (we overlapped in life by 11 years, but I never met him), Venna, Lysle, Elna and Richard were lovely as well.  It must have been a crazy household when they were all home in their heyday.  Also, I have been able to feel love, assistance and closeness to my dear ones beyond the veil through experiences of my own.]

~ Kristine Monson Westover, 2019]

Walter P Monson left his body and saw his daughter

As recorded in the Book “Life Everlasting” by Duane S. Crowther

One evening just before Christmas while addressing an audience at the old Farmer’s Ward Chapel on South State Street, I was stricken with intense pain from a strangulated hernia.  That night I underwent an abdominal operation. My condition was so serious and my chances of living so slight that the doctors did not remove the afflicted section. They simply sewed up the wound, feeling that it was only a matter of a few hours at most before I would die.

Next morning when I awoke my family and others were kneeling about my bed and Bishop LeGrand Richards of the Sugarhouse Ward was praying for my recovery. At midnight I was fully awake. I heard the Christmas chimes and felt the nurse taking my pulse and temperature. Suddenly a coldness attacked my feet and hands. It move up my limbs and up my arms towards my body. I felt it reach my heart. There was a slight murmur. I gasped for breath and lapsed into unconsciousness so far as all things mortal.

Then I awoke in full possession of all my faculties in another sphere of life. I stood apart from my body and looked at it. I noticed that its eyes were partly closed and that the chin had dropped. I was now without pain, and the joy of freedom I felt and the peace of mind that came over me were the sweetest sensations I had ever experienced. I lost all sense of time and space. The law of gravitation had no hold upon me......

As I turned my head in the direction I intended to go I saw my little daughter, Elna, who had died twenty-one years before. She was more mature than when she passed away, and was most beautiful to my eyes, so full of life, intelligence and sweetness. As she came towards me she raised her right hand and said “Go back Papa, I want Richard first. Then Grandma must come, and then Mama is coming, before you.”

The next thing I knew was my body gasping for breath. I felt my heart action start and was conscious of the coldness leaving my body. All numbness left me and the natural warmth returned. I felt the nurse shaking me and heard her say, ‘Mr Monson, you must not let yourself slip like that again.’”

For five weeks I remained in the hospital, gaining a little strength each day. I was administered to frequently by brothers James E Talmage, George Albert Smith, Patriarch Kirkham, and others, and my family exercised all the faith within their power in my behalf.

Mrs Monson visited me every day with my son Richard. She was told by the doctor C. F. Wilcox that there was no hope for my recovery, and of course her visits were attended with deep emotion.  Many times little Richard, for he was barely six years old, took my hand and pressed it affectionately against his cheek. ‘Daddy’, he would say anxiously, ‘you’re not going to die are you?’

I could not control my emotions, try as I would, but I managed to say, ‘No Dick, it is not my turn’.

Four weeks after I returned home, my boy Richard passed away. During the last hours of his life he sat up in bed opened his big blue eyes, and looked toward the door with intense interest. ‘Come in Elna,’ he said, ‘there’s only papa and mama here.’

I asked him whom he could see and he answered, ‘Elna is here. It’s funny you can’t see her. And there are a whole lot of people with her who want me to come.’  He called his mother to the bed and put his arms around her neck. ‘Can I go with Elna? He asked.

‘Yes my dear,’ she answered, ‘you have suffered enough’.

‘Then I’ll go. And I’ll be happy if you will promise not to cry once for me,’ he pleaded.  Mrs Monson gave him the promise he wished and left the room.

‘Daddy,’ he said to me, ‘come here. I guess mama has gone out to cry’.  He paused a moment, then turned and looked in the direction of the door and listened intently at something he evidently heard. ‘Dear old daddy;’ he went on at length, ‘so you promised at the hospital I could go. Now I know why you cried when I said, ‘You are not going to die, are you daddy?’  Three hours later his eyes closed in eternal sleep.

How he knew that I wept because I had been told by Elna that he was to go first, and that my coming back was equivalent to a promise that he might precede me to the great beyond can only be explained through knowledge given him from Elna herself, for he knew nothing of the circumstance of what I saw and heard while my spirit was separated from my body at the hospital.

Three weeks after his passing, I visited my mother Ellen Monson at Preston, Idaho. Mother had been a sufferer for may years, but her constitution was strong and the doctor had told her that she had every chance of living for ten or fifteen years. She lamented the fact that she was spared while my boy was taken.  She said she had desired to die for twenty-two years. 

Without realizing what I said, I made her this promise: ‘Mother you haven’t twenty two days to suffer’. Nineteen days from that time, mother left us.  And six years from the time of mother’s death, Mrs Monson passed away.

WALTER P. MONSON
(Testimony of Walter P. Monson, former president of the Eastern States Mission)

[Melancholy details:  It is reported that Elna died of pneumonia, however, there was a diphtheria epidemic in their community at the time that took two of her close relatives in the same week.  Maybe she actually had diphtheria rather than pneumonia, who knows?  Not that it matters now.  She is probably buried in Franklin or Preston, Idaho but I have not found the grave.  Richard died of CML Leukemia.  Leona died of CML Leukemia.  This form of leukemia is not supposed to run in families.  Leona carried Richard around even during his radiation treatments so maybe he was a radioactive hot spot.  He received his radiation treatments while seated on her lap, both of them unprotected from stray radiation. The doctor also got CML. In those days, the physician might check the strength of the radiation by testing it on his own arm until he got something like a mild sunburn -- a strong enough beam.  Richard was ill a decade before Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning, which wasn’t yet understood.  Walter's mother's death is mentioned and I do not know how my great-grandmother Ellen Monson died but she had several chronically painful health problems.

Uncle Weldon intended for this to be included in his father’s history, and says so in the text.  This is a copy of Grandfather Monson’s experience of Christmastime 1923 and the events of the following months.  I found it online, but I have older written versions here at home.  He mentions here that his little son Richard “was barely six years old” when Grandfather was hospitalized.  However, I wonder if he was actually 5 years old.  FamilySearch has Richard Parkinson Monson born March 3, 1918, which fits the timing for his birth in New York, and the family’s return to Utah from New York.  FamilySearch records say he died the day before his 6^th birthday.  Weldon also mentions that he died at his birthday.  Perhaps when he says "barely" he means "nearly." or perhaps "in his sixth year."  Also, Grandfather said that Elna died 21 years before, but FamilySearch has her death in 1900 just weeks after her birth that same year, but in a letter, Grandfather’s mother Ellen Monson mentions events in January 1901 that might have included Elna’s death.  

This experience and event happened in 1923 and Richard died early in 1924.  I believe Elna lived longer, because I recall my father said that she was a year or two when she died.  She died before he was born so he had no personal memory of it.]