Grandma Faun's Funeral

This morning was Grandma Faun's funeral.  I wanted to share the photo slideshow that I put together to play at the viewing (it's got every photo I've been able to collect of Grandma throughout the years, so it's quite long, and was nice to have playing in the background so people could come and go, watching shorter portions of it as they pleased).  I also thought I'd include the thoughts that I shared about Grandma at the funeral.  

Funeral Notes:

•She loved us each individually, taking the time to find out what we were interested in and going to do that.  I was an animal crazy tom boy as a kid, so it wasn’t unusual for us to drive down the country roads alongside the farmer’s fields and stop to catch frogs in the irrigation ditches along the way, or to visit pet stores to see the animals, or to go camping.  

•When I was a kid I would fly to Utah to visit Grandma. And each time I came home, I would cry and cry.  My mom assumed I was crying because I was sad to be back home.  But I was actually sad because my 12 year old self knew that Grandma was at least 50 years old, which sounded so ancient to a 12 yr old that I was absolutely sure that she would have died of old age before the next time I had a chance to see her.  (But she made it to 90, so I guess she proved me wrong).  😉 

•I remember when I was 12 or 13 the two of us took a trip to the east coast to visit national and church history sites.  On that trip she was the driver, and I was the navigator.  She gave me an atlas and left the navigating completely up to me, and she followed all my driving instructions, regardless of the fact that it sometimes resulted in going around in circles on the complicated freeways outside the big cities.  But that was no problem for her, it was just part of the experience.  

•Grandma was always thinking of others.  When I was in college she’d always come to visit and stock me up with more groceries than I could ever use from Costco, or get me skiing clothes when I took a ski class, or get me a really nice maternity dress to wear to my sister’s wedding at a time when that kind of thing didn’t fit into my budget.  She was always thinking of others.  

•My siblings & I got to take turns visiting Grandma’s house when we were kids.  And one year she offered to fly each of my 5 boys to visit her in Utah.  That’s a pretty cool great grandma who can handle little boy energy all summer long. 

•She had a love of learning — I don’t know if I ever saw her go to bed at night without a book in her hands.  She and I shared a passion for genealogy.  And she had a strong testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and wanted to share that with each of us. 

Slideshow for Faun Moore Chidester's funeral, 5 September 2025

https://youtu.be/HToYzNxQ6yw