Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [137]
Then one day in late 1992, less than six months after he and his siblings had left the FLDS, Lamont’s aunt returned home to the trailer in tears. His mother had suffered a rupture in her uterus and, in pain, collapsed to the ground, striking her head extremely hard on the tile floor. She was bleeding internally and sustained some brain damage as a result of her fall. By the time the ambulance arrived she was in a coma, and there was no indication of whether she would ever come out of it.
With Daleen incapacitated, Grant quickly tried to repossess his children. To avoid him, Lamont’s aunts would load Lamont and his siblings into a car and drive them furiously around St. George. His mother’s relatives would lecture him and his siblings about how evil their father was. Lamont had always loved and respected his father, and these stories made him confused and unsure what to believe. The resentment that he’d felt toward his mother for taking them out of Short Creek began to fade, and for the first time he started to have a more balanced sense of what had really gone on at their home.
Every second that he could, Lamont, was holding vigil by his mom’s bedside, but by late December she’d been moved to a long-term-care facility. It was ten in the morning on December 30, 1992, when Lamont received the devastating news that his mother had passed away.
As if losing her wasn’t hard enough, that night his grandfather came to him and directed that he and his siblings not attend a funeral service in St. George that her family was planning. “They are apostates,” George told his grandson.
Already, the priesthood leaders had denied his mother the right to a proper funeral service in the FLDS Church. All they would allow was a graveside, closed-casket ceremony. In their eyes she was a wicked woman who died because she’d left the priesthood. To further inflame Lamont’s already conflicted feelings, he was told that the prophet, Rulon Jeffs, had held a prayer circle with Lamont’s father and grandfather to pray that God intervene on Grant’s behalf. They’d put a photo of Lamont’s mother at the center of their circle and “placed her in the hands of God.” As Lamont understood it, they’d asked for God to take her life so that Grant could get his children back.
The fact that this group of men would wish harm upon her for making the choice she felt was right for her family presented huge doubts in Lamont’s mind that something was wrong with his father and the church. Leaving Short Creek had been challenging for Lamont, but he had never wished for his return to happen like this. In the coming years, Lamont said he’d discovered a respect and admiration for his mother’s strength. He celebrated her ability to do what was right in her eyes and not blindly follow one man’s word. Her death only reinforced the importance of the role that she had played in his life, magnifying her legacy even then to the point where Lamont abhorred his father’s views and the church that had created them.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Lamont and two of his brothers snuck out of the community and attended his mother’s funeral in St. George. When his father arrived in town later in the day to take the boys home, Lamont refused to get into the car. Buoyed by his many aunts and uncles, Lamont grew indignant as his father fought with him to get in.
“This is your choice,” Grant Barlow told his son before driving off that day.
It was a choice that Lamont soon regretted. While his many aunts and uncles had wanted him and his siblings to remain with their mother, none were prepared to take on the guardianship of a rebellious, angry, and grieving fifteen-year-old. In the end, he went to Salt Lake City, where he lived with one of his mother’s sisters who, ironically, was still a member of the FLDS.
For the next two years he struggled in Salt Lake, attending Alta Academy under Warren’s watchful eye. Lamont had a terrible time adjusting and being accepted by his aunt’s family. He felt extremely misunderstood and because of all the confusion he’d been experiencing,