One spring morning I was sitting in my bedroom office, enjoying my flax oatmeal with cinnamon, slivered almonds, and strawberries and a hot cup of coffee. My diffuser gurgled and cranked out patchouli blend as I gazed out my window at the birds flitting around the bird feeder hanging from our nutcracker-shaped pear tree, studded overnight with bountiful white blossoms. As my laptop whirred to life, I glanced at the date - April 21st - and gasped. "I have to make Dad's birthday card and send it today! His 85th birthday is in 4 days!"

Without missing a beat, I clicked open my subscription digital card service, which enables me to send a year's worth of animated e-cards to my friends and family, or add photos and text to templates for printed greetings. Within minutes I had found a perfect 85th birthday card, and was in the process of opening our online photo service to find a recent photo of myself with Dad when it hit me. "Make it personal this Mother's Day - Shop Now!" the headline read, splayed across the top of my screen amidst photo albums of exuberant young families with children and new baby greeting cards. It occurred to me, perhaps for the first time since my 83-year-old mother died the previous June, that this would be my first Mother's Day without her.

Last Mother's Day - May of 2021 - was the last time I had seen her in person before she died. I sat on a wooden stool by her armchair, trying to act like all was well while Dad hooked up a pouch of food to the tube attached to her stomach. She possessed an errant esophagus that refused to admit nourishment to the stomach, diverting it instead to the lungs, where it stopped her from breathing. After several months of evaluating options and propping up Mom's spirits, Dad finally came to terms with God's will and bought several months' worth of liquid meals (which he ended up throwing out - much to his chagrin - a couple of months after she died, because the company would not take them back and he couldn't resell them).

I wasn't sure what to get her that Mother's Day, but I knew I couldn't show up empty-handed. Weeks before, I had asked Dad, "Would Mom like some spring pajamas, or maybe some nice lavender hand lotion?" but he said she was all set, but needed her usual frosted pink shade of lipstick. I wrapped up the lipstick with lime green tissue paper in a hot pink bag, along with a card (stamped "Made with love for you by Zazoo Plazz" on the back) printed on thick cream-colored card stock, and selected a cool quartz crystal she could hold and press to her face while praying or watching television.

On a whim, I stopped at a nursery down the road from their house to buy a special flowering plant to brighten their patio or porch. It was nearly 6 p.m., closing time, but the greenhouse door was open, so I jumped out of the car to investigate. Suddenly, the manager was by my side, pointing out various shades of glorious hanging plants as we passed, until my gaze fell on a robust begonia studded with salmon-colored blooms. "That's a perfect choice," he said, and I agreed.  As he took my cash and recorded the sale manually (as he had closed out the computer in an attempt to give himself an evening off during his busy season), I explained that the plant was for my mother, who lived nearby, and thanked him for his assistance. It never ceases to amaze me how helpers always appear when I am on a holy mission, however unbeknownst to me it might have been at the time.  

When I arrived at my parents' house, Mom was sitting in her blue armchair in the living room, dressed in her uniform - stretchy black pants, a coral three-quarter-sleeve top, and a lightweight coral zip-front fleece. She matched the plant! I was so happy to be able to visit - without our masks for the first time in over a year - that I drew close to hug her shoulders and kiss her on the cheek. "Maybe you can hug me next time," she said, as I stepped back. Next time? I placed the bags by her feet, and the plant on the dining room table, where she could see it throughout the day.

She unwrapped the lipstick, pleased that I had remembered her special shade (more or less, since the makeup company always seemed to discontinue her favorites), and grasped the crystal between her thumb and forefinger, held it to her heart. She opened my card, slowly committing each line to memory as she'd done with so many of my earliest creations, magnificent maternal manifestos scribbled in crayon, with the ubiquitous smiling yellow sun in the sky and awkward one-eyed birds strutting in towering blades of emerald green grass. Little did I know this would be my last chance to tell her how much I loved her, at least when we were both on this side of the divide.

As the liquid rolled into her abdomen, she praised my choice of plant, instructing Dad to move it outside during the day for some sun and fresh air. We chatted about doctors, the eggplant parmesan she had prepared for Dad though she could not eat it herself, various legal and financial loose ends she deemed of utmost importance (ever the businesswoman and household manager), and my husband and sons (one in college, the other to graduate high school in a month). It seemed like I should have said something more important, done something to freeze the moments as they slipped away, but I did not. She was getting tired, and the shadows were falling outside. It was time to leave. The rest is blurry, but I remember seeing the coral begonia holding court on the front steps, some tightly coiled buds sprinkled among the glorious mature blooms fully open among its lush leaves. By August, when I left the house with the last armful of Mom's clothes to donate to charity, all of the flowers had opened, some falling to the ground or wilting in the late-summer heat.

This Mother's Day, my husband will visit his 92-year-old mother, and I will honor Mom in spirit. She warned me not to visit her at the cemetery, since "she wouldn't be there," choosing to visit me instead in my dreams, or as one of the "random" cardinals I glimpse out my window.  And I will savor the gifts, cards, and attention from my sons - now 19 and 21 - as the seedlings I so lovingly tended bloom wildly in the warm sunshine.