How Miss Norma had the time of her life — at 90

Just two days after her husband died, 90-year-old Norma Jean Bauerschmidt was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

the doctor laid out the grim schedule: hysterectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and months of rehab.

Having just watched her daughter, 44, and husband of 67 years spend their final days hooked up to hospital machines, this quiet Michigan woman rebelled and announced: ‘I’m 90 years old. I’m hitting the road!’

she wanted to join her retired son, tim, and his wife Ramie on their freewheeling travels around America.

the couple lived in an old motorhome, parking up outside national parks and in Walmart car parks as the whim took them. Although thrilled by Norma’s unexpected zest for life, they worried the doctors would think them reckless.

But this one surprised them. He lit up. ‘As doctors,’ he said, ‘we see what cancer treatment looks like every day. You’re doing exactly what I’d want to do in your situation. Have a fantastic trip!’

this life-affirming book is an inspirational account of that trip. It’s about three people learning to let go of their fears and find love and trust in each other and the world around them.

But it’s not all plain sailing: there is a new, wheelchair- friendly RV to be acquired. And Norma’s son and his wife, who until now had lived only for each other, would also have to learn to share their intimate space, curtail their long dawn hikes and become full-time carers.

As tim’s second wife, Ramie had not known Norma long. she had also suffered from depression and feared that life with a dying nonagenarian would leave her feeling ‘insignificant and isolated’.

tim shared her anxiety. ‘I had forgone having a family of my own because I did not want this kind of responsibility,’ he says. An adopted child, he had lived miles away from Norma for decades. ‘ Could Mom, in her time of old age, fragility and illness, count on me?’ he wondered.

‘Dad was the frontman . . . always ready with a smile and a bad joke,’ he writes. ‘Mom smiled and laughed at his jokes. It seemed to me that she had gone most of her life without engaging with others in her own voice.’

But, to his delight, he finds her growing ‘spunky’ in widowhood. When conventional medication left her feeling drained and dizzy, they suggested swapping it for cannabis cream. they expected Norma to be shocked, but she negotiated the ‘pot shop’ with nonchalance.

tim and Ramie thought they would be ‘showing’ Norma the world. In the event,