My mother bought 12 white carnations every Mother's Day. She cut one from the dozen before church and pinned it to the front of my dress to wear during Sunday school. A white carnation on Mother's Day meant one's mother was alive. A red carnation meant she was dead.

The carnation was a part of her holiday, but until spring of third grade I had little understanding of the meaning of the white blossom. No one I knew had ever died. But in April of that year, my eight-year-old cousin Cheryl was diagnosed with acute leukemia and died in 72 hours. Two weeks later, my grandfather died of a stroke.

Overnight, death invaded my world. Grieving relatives moved into our house. They slept in the living room and in my bed; their suitcases were lodged in my mother's sewing room. I was eight years old, like my dead cousin, so I became something of a treasure to my despondent relatives. Aunts, uncles, and cousins who never noticed me in the past suddenly sought me out. They rocked me, patted my head, and uttered tender words.

But the attention could not mask the true purpose of their visit. They were there to mourn the loss of a dear child and a beloved grown-up. I remember walking into the bathroom and finding my aunt crying in my mother's arms. My cousins huddled around the piano, but never played a tune. My father disappeared into his workshop for hours each night and emerged with dark circles under his eyes. The sadness seemed to last forever.

One day, it ended. Mother's Day arrived and the aunts and uncles were gone. The cousins returned to wherever they came from. And my mother's white carnations appeared in a vase on the kitchen table.

Mother's Day was a cold Sunday that year, and I sat shivering at the kitchen table while my mother made oatmeal. She wore her ragged green chenille bathrobe and padded through the kitchen in her hand-knit slippers, reaching for sugar and milk and salt while stirring the gruel in the double boiler. It was all so strange, remarkable, and odd. One moment we were a family in pain, surrounded by death and nonstop weeping. The next, I was ready for Sunday school on a day like any other. My mother stirred the oatmeal, shifting from one foot to the other and humming a vague and familiar tune.

Then something happened I can never forget. She put down her wooden spoon, stretched her arms toward the ceiling, and surrendered to her fatigue with a yawn. It was a weak whimper, ordinary and simple, but it seemed to originate from a deep well of despair. She sounded so vulnerable, I felt something break open behind my heart. I began to cry. "I don't want you to die," I wept.

My mother turned to me, stunned. "What are you talking about?" she said, as she reached for the washcloth above the faucet. She rinsed the cloth in cold water and pressed it to my cheek, shaking her head. "Such foolishness," she said. "No one is going to die."

She held my face in her hands and scowled. Then she reached for a carnation and pulled a safety pin from her apron pocket. "A white carnation," she said, pinning the flower to the front of my dress, "because your mother is alive."

Those who have lost a mother know the truth: Death does not remove her love from us. Our mothers never leave us; rather, it is we who move away from them. Long ago, they cuddled us near their hearts, rocking and nursing. We fussed for our freedom, straightened our backs, and insisted on our first steps of independence. Once we learned to walk, we rushed to our playgrounds, ran to our school buses, and left them behind. Our mothers offered to hold our bicycle seats as we learned to balance, but we pedaled away from them. They worked to pay for our high school proms, college classes, and real-estate down payments. We drove our cars to far-away cities and married people they didn't understand.

We are always leaving our mothers behind; still, they love us without complaint. We grow up and forget their loving vigilance until an awful phone call brings us home.

My mother died five years ago, two days before her 87th birthday. In her hospital bed, she seemed tiny and pale. Her generous hands were stiffened with arthritis. "I know I have to go," she murmured behind her oxygen mask, "but I will miss you." Then, in one terrible moment, her breath halted, her heartbeat failed, and death's shadow blocked the sun.

But the terrible moment passed, and I was surprised by a miracle: Death did not remove her from me. The end of life could not make her abandon me. She became a deep part of my life-present in my prayers and daily decision-making. Like all mothers, mine loved me with the ferocity of forever.

On Mother's Day, I wear a single white carnation near my heart. mm

Kristine Holmgren is a freelance writer based in Northfield.