An angel looking toward the heavens

One of my favorite days in 2014 was the day this picture was taken. May 6 was a gorgeous day and the perfect day for a road trip. On mom’s bucket list was to visit the grave sites of her parents and her sister Dorthy.  Her sister had passed away 30 years earlier and in that time my mother had not been to the grave since the funeral. So we set out that Tuesday morning on a wonderful journey.

I snapped several photos at the cemetery and this is one reminds me what a precious day we spent together. It captures my mother contemplating the near future when she would be reunited with her parents and her sisters.

We sat for a few minutes in the car, before leaving the cemetery, talking about her parents and how much she has missed them over the years and how much I will miss mine.  How unfair life can be to take our parents away long before we are ready to say goodbye. We had a few laughs and a good cry, said goodbye to Rose Hills and headed home.

Mom talked about dad and that she had wished he could have been with us. We had to stop by the financial planner so that mom could sign some paperwork and we talked about the various things that still needed to be done to prepare for her passing.  We also talked about some of the things she wanted for her funeral and about how we needed to go pick out a plot for her and dad.

Looking back, even though some of our conversations were on topics that weren’t so pleasant to address, the trip as a whole was quite wonderful. I am grateful that I got to have days like this one with mom!