Darlene Call

OGDEN – Darlene Call passed away suddenly but peacefully on the morning of March 8, 2022. She started the day with the kind of enthusiasm we expected of her, for she was almost always excited about something to come. She found joy in the smallest things: food and drink, people and parties, flowers and gardens, travel and movie nights at home. She loved the rain and sun, mountains and trees, oceans and beaches, the city and country. All of this is to say that she loved living and she loved those she lived with. If you were loved by Darlene, you knew it. She lived 84 years with an open, ardent heart.
Darlene was born on August 24, 1937 to Phil Wadsworth Call and Doloris Norseth Call. She must have been so tightly held by those new parents because she grew up to love others by holding them tightly close to her. She was the first of three children, joined later by a brother, Ron, then a sister, Judy. The relationship between siblings remained strong across time.
Darlene graduated in 1955 from Ben Lomond High School then attended Weber State University. She enjoyed a long career in real estate. She loved homes and design and antiques. She appreciated objects intrinsically for their crafted endurance and refinement, but she loved the extrinsic associations as well, the way, for example, an object became a vessel for stories and culture across time. Darlene was smitten by beauty. One time shopping, she discovered glass ornaments of varying size and color made to refract light in a room for a dazzling display. A couple of days later her home featured several of these baubles, each hung exactly in a way to catch a glimmer of sun or a slant of lamp light then to throw the beam back into the room in amplification. She loved light-filled space; she filled space with light.
She traveled extensively and lived in many places, including Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, and London. Eventually, she returned to live again in her childhood home with its view from the kitchen sink window to a long stretch of yard lined with fruit bearing trees and, in the back corner, an old woodshed built by her father. Looking from the window into the back, time must have blurred for her sometimes from then to now, now to then: the people that had come and gone, all the changes of season, different casts of shadow and light across the ground. Looking out on the yard, the trees must have seemed both as they were in the present moment and as they had been in phases of past time. Darlene would have seen all of that from the window.
The long yard has always been home to a motley variety of pets. Their stories merge with hers, with ours, indelibly. Darlene loved animals and adored dogs. Her dogs were Buffy, Sammy, Valentine, and Daisey. It could be hard though to know the names for certain, as she made up monikers in the moment, and each of her dogs answered to an assortment of terms. As much as Darlene loved language, she also spoke to us and to her animals in song and sound. A medley of "Ohhs" and "Ahhs" expressed her almost perpetual delight. Dogs knew the code, and we got it too.
Darlene is survived by her brother, Ron Call; by nieces, Christy Call, Amy Tribe, and Devre Carter; by her last dog, the one with perhaps the most elaborate moniker of all, Sabrina Fair. Dar leaves behind a contingent of close friends as well, many of them have been with her since the days of school. She also has many close associations from her volunteer work at the Ogden LDS temple.
Darlene will rest now next to her parents in the Evergreen cemetery, at the foot of a mountain range she always took in with awe. Her dear sister Judy also precedes her in death.
Graveside services will be on Monday, March 14, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. at Evergreen Memorial Park, 100 Monroe Blvd. Ogden, Utah. A visitation will be held prior at Myers Mortuary, 845 Washington Blvd. Ogden, Utah, from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.