Life Goes On

First, dear friends and readers, thank you for your kind words about my mother. I have been overwhelmed (in a good way) with so much love and support and comfort from everyone that I could spend the rest of my life just counting how blessed I am to have such wonderful friends.

And now life goes on.

The boys and I are heading to New Jersey the end of next month to place my mother's ashes in the beautiful garden at Wilson Memorial Church in Watchung, New Jersey, where we all placed my father's ashes 23 years ago. As my sister bought our childhood home in North Plainfield, New Jersey, a couple of years ago, it will also be a chance for the boys to see where we grew up and for us all to share more childhood stories and memories.

Although I miss my mother so keenly throughout every day, and can hardly believe I can't share with her every detail about Gregory's high school graduation last weekend, my dominant emotion right now is gratitude that my mother's life was so filled with the joys of reading, writing, and family, that her long ordeal is now over, and that it ended so peacefully and lovingly.

And I'm sort of excited about the rest of my life, taking up all the projects I've neglected for the past weeks and months. I have a paper to write for a volume commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Secret Garden (a paper that is due tomorrow!), and a paper to write for the Children's Literature Association conference next week in Ann Arbor (on Rosamund Du Jardin's 1950s teen romance trilogy: Double Date, Double Feature, and Double Wedding). I have a book of my own to revise. I have trails to walk on, a pool to sit by, friends who are overdue for tea and treats, a cat to cuddle, trips to plan.

I wish I could tell my mother about all of them. But I think she already knows.