A day for mothers, for my daughters who are mothers, and for my own mother, gone ten years this October. I can’t complain; she lived a long life. But it’s never long enough, is it?

I have so much to tell her, so many questions to ask about her family, about aging with grace, about the hereafter, starting with … does it exist?

In the old days, when women routinely wore corsages, a pink carnation signified that your mother was living and a white carnation that she had passed away. What a lovely tradition, akin to mourning crepe and black arm bands, a way to tell the world you are grieving, that you are, even if old enough to be grandmother yourself, still a motherless child.

(Alas, no carnation photos, but this pale pink rose is almost white.)