There is no headstone. No rectangular concrete marker with a rounded edge across the top to blunt the grief. No carved heart of incongruously shiny granite, no lichen-embossed urn to hold flowers and remind me of my emptiness. There are no words carved indelibly to remind anyone that she was. My mother wanted to be cremated, and have her ashes scattered in the mountains. She thought funerals were barbaric, all those people hovering over an expensive coffin holding a person who's gone, all that wailing and swaying, all that sadness.  She hated the idea of people coming to sit at a marker to mourn her. Celebrate, she said, because I've gone somewhere better. No use being sad. Perhaps she didn't understand that funerals and graves and headstones aren't for the dead. They're for the living. For the ones left behind who have nothing to hold but air and memories. For the ones who are left with no way to prove their loved one existed except this box she rested in for a whi...

The Little Limes were beautiful. In early summer, the so-called-petite hydrangeas sprouted thick green leaves and a profusion of pale green blossoms that faded to white then pink. Their light scent drifted around the patio attracting winged things.  After winter set in for good, the leaves broke off but the blooms dried into shades of caramel, sand, and chestnut that lingered on the stalks. Then the brittle blossoms swayed against the white snow. Yes, they were beautiful. For another time, another garden, a life where no one perpetually needed to pass through. Here, now, they were flower-heavy and weight-bent and wild-grown. I tried to tame them, really I did. Every spring I trimmed the shrubs down to a diameter of less than two feet. I wound a circular tomato plant trellis around each bush to coax it to carry its own weight. And I spoke sweetly to them, asking them to please bloom upright like their rosebush neighbors and not crowd the patio stepping stones. Please - be polite, be...