I’ve woken up groggy because I’ve had a late night of eating all the ice cream and tortilla chips and salad poppers in the house while reading celebrity gossip on my public library magazine app. Was it a good way to end Mother’s Day? Let’s say there is no judgment involved. What happens in the kitchen after midnight stays in the kitchen after midnight.

The rest of Mother’s Day went fine. As soon as I woke up, I was tuned in to my Emily wishing me a lovely Mother’s Day. If you’re a close friend or have read my blog for long, you’ll know that I “go to” a lake cabin each night as I am falling asleep where I am blissfully alone and in nature, and, interestingly, usually cooking, gardening, or reading. On Mother’s Day morning, Emily asked if this once she might join me at my cabin and prepare a pie for me (I often find myself baking pies as I fall asleep). She also offered to give me a shoulder and back rub, as I was full of achiness from some grueling blackberry root digging the day before. Emily never refused a massage from me and frequently asked for one. It was a beautiful way we connected, especially in our last months together. I would gently rub lotion on her feet and legs and work up to her back and arms and shoulders. When I was able to love her in this way, she was like a contented cat being stroked. On this morning, I felt her hands with her long and beautiful fingers massaging away my kinks and pain, and fell back asleep for another few hours.

Later that morning I went with my friend Heather to a horse farm to dig up irises, day lilies, daisies, comfrey, columbine and hollyhocks from an unused garden plot on the acreage. The horses were sleek and content, the pasture serene, the plant roots easily unsheathing themselves from the soil. There was a miniature pony named Sweet Pea and this little girl named Madison had shod her with little sneaker boots and put a rainbow keychain in her mane. I could only think how peaceful I was digging and enjoying the communion of friendship and nature.

With all my many new plant additions, I rushed home before the rain to find them new homes, most of them in my fern gully under the heron rookery, though the poppies (I forgot to mention the poppies!) went in the front yard beside the hedge.

So I planted and watered and weeded and showered, and we went to Saratoga beach (So many beaches!) to meet our nephew Caleb, his dear one Cassie and his mom, Judi, and her partner, Gerda. We had a fire on the beach and ate pizza and veggies and laughed and watched Moon Dog try to scare Lily, their large golden retriever. I felt joyful communion and ease on the beach with these people, my friends, my family.

Charlotte sent a beautiful letter to me, speaking on behalf of her sister, Emily, as well, which deeply touched me, and helped me to know she also has the knowing, the spark, that our dear Emily still exists in the stardust and the sea and the birds and all things that bring us joy, and that she, too, speaks and hears from her.

My eating rampage late at night was borne of some untethered grief I’d held in – not purposefully, but so much joy had been felt, that somehow I needed some time to grieve as well. In the early days after Emily died, I couldn’t eat for sorrow; now, it seems, I eat to express sorrow. This too shall pass, I hope, but for the waning hours of my first Mother’s Day without my beloved Emily being here, it was okay. I will not judge how I or anyone else expresses their grief.