Watermark

My Mother

BETTY LOU JULIAN [BROGAN] SERR

Betty Lou Julian Serr  died October 12, 2009  in Chandler, AZ.    She was born in Long Beach, California July 5, 1924, the daughter of Bob & Georgia (Kenney) Julian.  She went to Montana as a baby  with her parents and resided on a ranch near Clyde Park until the age of ten, when the family moved to a ranch near Wilsall,MT.   She attended schools in Clyde Park and Wilsall, graduating from Wilsall High School in 1942. 

She attended computer school in Spokane, Washington, then worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad.  In 1945 Betty married Richard Brogan and lived in Denver, CO for several years.  Two children were born to them - Richard and Sharon Brogan.  They were divorced in 1955 and Betty returned to Livingston where she again worked for the railroad.  In 1958 she moved to St. Paul, MN where she was employed by the Burlington Northern R.R.  

In 1964 she married Joseph Serr in Mason City, Iowa and moved to White Bear Lake, MN.  She retired from the Burlington Northern in 1990.  Since her retirement the Serrs have spent the winters in Chandler, AZ.  After Joe’s death in 2005 she moved to Arizona permanently.

She is survived by her daughter, Sharon Brogan of Missoula, MT, her twin sister, Bonnie Pinkerton of Chandler, AZ, .stepson Richard Serr and his wife Marge, step-son-in-law Al Dieken of Oakdale, MN,  surrogate daughter, Louise Fritschy and husband, Ron, Denver, CO, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.   

Betty had several surrogate children in her life - always ready to listen to someone in need. She was preceded in death by her son Richard, brother Russell Julian, foster brother Robert Clark and her parents.

Niki

Today I get to write, because Niki is going to the grocery store for me. Niki has been, steady and patient, in my life for twenty-eight years. She has outlasted my absences and withdrawals, my long silences and strenuous sulks. We've played together, at auctions and art shows; at second-hand stores and carnivals. We have comforted each other when our lives collapsed in shreds at our feet.

Niki is a slender twig of a cowgirl, with an artist screaming to get out. And she does get out. Niki can make something beautiful of the ordinary and the broken; she can find spirit in the inert. Even in me.

Even now.

More than once she has held out her hand to me when I was drowning, and pulled me back to shore. Pulled me awake.

Friendship is a deep and marvelous thing; it's full of surprises. Sometimes the strongest grow from dissimilar seeds -- this lovely and extroverted girl, adventurous and daring; and me, so settled, so stubborn, so inside-myself. Going to an event with Niki was always a truly social experience; everyone knew her, everyone wanted a moment of her attention. Still, all these years past, the men of my acquaintance always ask: So, do you still see Niki? How is she? Is she married?

And her daughters are like her, lovely blooms from a lovely tree. Exotic, brilliant, compelling.

Niki, of course, sees this in her daughters, but not in herself. What is it, in our lives as girls and women, that blinds us to our own beauty? To our own gifts?

***************

Today is bright and bent and buried in snow. Surely, somewhere in this town, chainsaws are howling -- but I don't hear them here. Though I went out yesterday in the cold morning and shook snow from our trees, they still bow down, holding to broken branches with pale strings of wood. The lilac tree in my garden has again lost part of itself; the courtyard birches have great gaps in their canopies. Everything sleeps.