Responding to Comments

Thanks for reading, posting comments and offering a "welcome back".

Yes, I too am trying to resist the tendency to refer in one way or another to the 'good old days'. My own parents are living examples of that tendency and offer many reminders that any argument will go over better without wandering down memory lane, unless, that is, you are explicitly asked to take the stroll. I am consoled in knowing that this tendency is not limited to Baby Boomers. From ancient times each generation has fallen into the trap of harkening to former glories.

 

Yes, I am on a sort of leave of absence in response to family need. Over the years a few other sisters in my community have had to take time away for similar reasons so this work of mercy is definitely not without precedent. It is the fruit of honest discernment with ones superior who in turn will consult with the diocesan Vicar for Religious. I am the oldest of two siblings but my sister works full time. So there you have it. My gratitude to my community is great. But I am eager to spend time with them and am searching for the right person to spell me as caregiver.

 

By all means do add me to your list on Facebook. The "Redemptoristine Nuns of New York" also have a community page on FB and you are welcome to add it to your friends list.

 

Cannot leave this tonight without mentioning the big news of the day, the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI. What a surprise to hear about it first thing in the morning. His wisdom is to be admired and appreciated. He has served long and well and is clearly no longer able to sustain the effort required to deal with all that is challenging the Church  and the People of God in these days. Let us all pray that the Holy Spirit will do a mighty work among those entrusted with selecting new leadership so that the love and compassion of the Father revealed in the Paschal Mystery of the Son will be known and felt in every human heart and all of creation.

Boomer In Between

Dad and I celebrating his 90th birthday 2011 

Go to
http://www.facebook.com/SisterHildegard
for pics

In the 25th year of their marriage, as if in celebration of a finally empty nest, my parents moved into a new home. Now, in the 70th year of a long love affair, they are newly separated by the vagaries of dementia in my mother and an ever growing physical weakness in my father. These days I live in their love nest caring for Dad while shuttling back and forth to visit my mother.

Friends have told me how fortunate I am to have my parents with me for so long. Mom is 88 and Dad is 91. Part of that 'greatest generation', they married young. She was barely 18 and he a 21 year old sergeant in the Army Air Corps soon headed for the Pacific. Before he was shipped out Mom joined him in places like Meridian, Mississippi and, Coffeeville, Kansas. Thus was I conceived. Born in the middle of 1945, technically I am not one of the Baby Boom Generation cohort of 1946 to 1964. Yet I have always felt part of the advance guard, one in the first lines of the cohort and sharing its sociological features.

When parents marry young, bear children quickly, live to ripe old age and then begin to need care, their children have already entered into the last stages of their own lives. In addition, these children have off spring of their own; children with whom they strive to remain connected. Not to be forgotten are grandchildren clamoring for loving attention.

Thus the shift in gears indicated here in January has brought the reality of many of my generation; extended family in both directions, calling for connection and perhaps, in the end, physical care and assistance in dismantling what remains of lives well lived.

 

New editorial policy here will include whatever strikes the fancy of this contemplative monastic nun temporarily on hiatus; of a very mature women (at least in age) with history as wife and mother, teacher and librarian, artist of sorts, and caregiver. All these, the reflections of a boomer in between.