One sunny blue-skied Spring day Mom and I traveled to Delaney Valley Memorial Gardens to visit some of our family. We brought along a shrimp salad sandwich and bag of chips to share, along with two diet cokes. My mom is Betty and my five brothers and I are/were all Baby Boomers. Quite interesting and ABSOLUTELY FUN, my Mom and I shared so much of life and laughter and very poignant times…this day was all of those.

We were on the “hunt” for her sister June and my great Aunt Edna (my Dad’s aunt). Their graves are sort of markers for different family members’ burial areas in the cemetery. Mom hadn’t visited Aunt June for a while and I hadn’t been since her funeral. I knew where Aunt Edna was, we had made a little hole on top of her mound and buried some of my brother Matt’s ashes in 2007. (SHHH! – don’t tell the management!)

I am running up hills and down while Mom shouts “maybe to the left.. or further back”, we did this for at least an hour and NO AUNT JUNE. We finally gave up and went to visit Aunt Edna. Her remains are buried in one of the sites my parents bought soon after the “Gardens” opened back in the 60’s. I guess they thought it was a necessary and responsible investment for their brood of six.

We walked among the statues and markers and found Aunt Edna fairly easily. We reminisced about life with her and others important to us who had passed on.  The view from the “Gardens” is lovely, it is adjacent to a golf course and the inhabitants are planted up and down soft rolling hills. Not bad for an eternal resting place  – my Mom will like it here.

Well – fast forward six years, mostly wonderful years, living close to my mother, with my husband and our college bound son on the occasional weekend. It has been about 13 months since my mother succumbed to a major stroke and we are waiting for her ashes to be returned. She and Dad both donated their bodies to the state medical board. I am sure they both served their own good purpose, my father with a multitude of lifetime maladies, and my mother at 89 with hardly a one – except the one that took her. I have no doubt that some aspiring young doctors learned from them both.

Betty and the Baby Boomer is a journal for me before I forget. A way to share Mom and my concerns, discussions, and experiences as we both aged. There are millions of families concerned with the well-being of aging parents, still working and with children in school. It is not an easy scenario for any of us. We did so many things very well but others we could have done better – we learned a lot. I want to share our experiences in hopes that they may help some of you facing similar challenges, maybe even serve as a catalyst to planning and the avoidance of some of our biggest mistakes.I want to share some charming and funny moments and some sadness that comes with an extended life span. My mother was smart, purposeful and forward-thinking (among so many other things), but we couldn’t avoid every pitfall or be prepared for every single situation that popped up. Betty and the Baby Boomer…hopefully inspirational and a bit helpful but mostly cathartic entertainment for me and  anyone who takes the time to read along. A story line that many more middle age children can relate to today and I encourage every and anyone to comment and share as we go along.

Thank you for reading, Ann

For the first time in my life, at 55, I was no longer someone’s “little girl”.