My Other Mother

This is an 82 year lady riding a horse in a canyon in Wyoming. We went up a rather steep trail and rode for about a half an hour each way. Don't you hope you will be this spry when you're 82?

I'm posting in honor of this woman, Lila Haderlie Burton, my mother's last remaining sibling, who passed away a couple of days ago at age 84. As I've spoken to my sisters about her, we all said the same thing, "She was like our other mother."

These sisters were less than two years apart in age, and were fast friends all of their lives. In fact, Aunt Lila was the reason my dad and mom met. She'd been the victim of his teasing in a class in high school. One day, he saw Lila sitting in a car along Main Street, and stopped off to bother her some more and noticed the cute girl in the back seat. When he started flirting with her, Lila told him to leave her sister alone. He didn't. They were married four years later after she finished high school and he finished WWII.

I think Lila visited us or we visited them every month of every year. She only lived 90 miles away in Idaho, and it was a convenient place to shop. They liked to visit us because my mom was a great cook and it was a mini-vacation to come "home" to Star Valley where they'd both grown up and my parents still lived. Often, in the summers, when my grandparents were at their home on the Idaho/Wyoming border, instead of Arizona where they wintered, our families would split the difference and meet up down there. We kids would play in the "woods" or the yard and the moms would bring the meal and my dad would bring his fishing pole, and we'd spend a long afternoon before we'd have to go home to milk.

Lila was the kind of aunt who sent a card and a gift to one of my young daughters who'd fallen and broke her arm. She was the aunt you could always stop by and visit if you were passing through town, and she was as happy to see you as your own mother. She was also the kind of aunt, that when you were 9 and staying for a week at her house, she'd yell at you just like she yelled at her own children, if the occasion called for it. You were her kid if you were in her house.

These two sisters had some upsets and a couple of falling-out times, but they always got over it and got back together. They always showed up for the special occasions, they talked on the phone many times a week, they shared the care of their elderly father by moving him into their homes on a monthly rotation with their oldest sister. When that sister died, there was just the two of them. They'd already shared the tragedy of losing their youngest brother in a plane crash at astronaut training school. Their mother went a couple of years after that. Their father's death wasn't a tragedy, just a sorrow at becoming orphans--it doesn't feel okay no matter how old you are. Years later, an estranged brother came home and they all made peace before he passed. It finally got down to just the two of them, and Lila made the two hour trek often to visit her little sister as our mother faded away those last two months. Lila missed her immensely.

They never hesitated to share what they owned. They took care of each other's children in good times and bad. They griped and complained and laughed and conspired and now I know they are embracing one another and rejoicing in the family reunion. Both are again with their beloved, eternal spouses, their bothers and sister, their loving parents and all the assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandchildren that preceded them both. All together, forever more.