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I woke up to this subject line in my email "Passing of David Paulsen," & sat on my couch & cried, "No, no,...," while my children flocked to hug me w/o knowing what was wrong. What is wrong is this: My 1st mentor, who gave me Kierkegaard & gave all of us Heavenly Mother, is gone.
I still remember when he stopped me in the hall in the JFSB as we passed & told me I was a "really good writer." & when he stopped me in the same spot & told me he wanted to hire me as a research assistant, but I was currently interning w/ his friend in Special Collections.
Then when I graduated & could no longer be at the library as a student worker, he told me again. He wanted me to research w/ him. He had gotten a grant from the Women's Research Institute to research Heavenly Mother & hired me full-time as BYU Staff.
I worked for him for 4+ months. May, June, July, August, & part of September. He taught me how to research, how to use databases. He taught me where I could look to find things when I got discouraged that http://LDS.org 's search engine only came up w/ 9 things.
He pointed me to Gospel Link which had more than 240. I spent that summer reading every single one. & each week we'd meet in person to talk about what I found. (Martin was working too, but from Europe that summer.)
The work that we did then, that became the @byustudies article, "A Mother There," has opened up everything. We owe it to David. His vision, & good name, & good work made it possible–made a team w/ apostles willing to grant permission to publish what we did w/ BYU's name.
I couldn't have written Mother's Milk or I Gave Her a Name w/o that background. & we wouldn't have had the "Mother in Heaven" Gospel Topics Essay or Jeffrey R. Holland breaking a 20 year fast(!) of saying "Mother in Heaven" in General Conference.
We wouldn't have A Mother Here Art & Poetry contest that Martin Pulido & Caroline Kline organized, or Dove Song that came out of it, edited by Martin, @TitaniaYellow, & @fireinapasture. We wouldn't have all of the new Heavenly Mother poems & art.
We wouldn't have members saying "Heavenly Parents" in their wards & branches across the world, including in my Zoom branch in China from people who aren't me. We wouldn't have any of this w/o David Paulsen. Please remember him. Please know his name.
& if you are the praying type, please say a prayer, literally thanking God for David Paulsen, for the gift of renewed openness about Heavenly Mother. I know I will be, for the rest of my life.
& now I have to figure out a way to teach my classes today w/o sobbing. & I think the only way I'll be able to do it is to channel David. To think of his gentleness, & how he wore these vintage BYU sweaters, & every day leaned against the chalkboard & got them covered w/ chalk.
& suddenly I'm flooded w/ so many more memories, how *he* was the professor I talked to when I was considering a mission. Or when I came back & was choosing between law school & library school. He would listen & share his own stories that made me feel supported & cared for.
& when Deidre organized a Kierkegaard conference at BYU w/ the top Kierkegaard scholars from around the world, he was retired but there. Cora was only 4 weeks old. David walked into my session to hear *me* speak, instead of going to someone more famous.
& after Mother's Milk, I finally remembered to send him a copy. I can't remember if he was on hospice yet, or just on dementia's slow decline, but his daughter wrote me about the joy it brought him, & how her mom would read him my poems aloud. Me now, picturing that scene. 
Now thinking of these words of mine in I Gave Her a Name.
& this one, too.
I keep thinking of more things we owe to David. The Young Women's theme including Heavenly Parents plural. Just SO much.
