Three years ago, I wrote about my mother, Mim Myers, who died in 2006 at the age of 93.  She’s now been gone nine years, and the aching loss is felt no less today.  In fact, the meaning of things ephemeral becomes all the more acute with each passing year.  There are so many things I want her to know about, events that would have made her proud, my honorary doctorate (she’d have let every one of her friends know about that), my husband’s book project nearing completion, her first grandson’s graduation from high school and acceptance at Oberlin College, her other two grandsons’ bar mitzvah successes, her granddaughters’ artistic talents and love of martial arts, my sister’s and my closeness.

I would, of course, have shared the other family stuff too:  troubling medical diagnoses, the passing of friends. And she would have been there to commiserate, find the silver linings in the dark clouds, changing nothing but somehow making it all feel better.

She would have some humorous insights, flashes of wit, cutting asides for fools she wouldn’t suffer lightly, all laced with salty language.  The lilacs I have always placed on her grave on Mother’s Day aren’t even blooming yet due to the harsh winter.  She’d fully understand my spending the time getting annuals to plant in the garden rather than brave the traffic in the cemetery.  I’ll go, but when the lilacs have blossomed. For the fact is that, every time I put roses or tulips or lilacs in my kitchen, dining or living room, I am communing with my mother.  And there is rarely a day that I am without flowers – or the memory of her.

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