Grief loves an anniversary. The fresher, the better. This is not a revelation to anyone; it is guidance gained from supermarket magazines, as well as personal experience. Still, I was mugged by its sudden onset as I readied our summer bungalow pre-4th of July.

This is the first summer without my mother. Her impromptu visits had ceased a few years ago when she was relegated to a nursing home. But the place holds many memories of time spent with her and around her. Though she was a flighty old bird, this acreage outside of Monticello was always one of her favorite landings.

Her little car would pull up on the grass in front of our bungalow, against convention and all the rules. For a few minutes, all was quiet as she gathered her belongings and applied a fresh coat of bright lipstick before emerging with a wide smile, popping her eyes to affect a Hollywood starlet meeting the press. The children would run to her. “Grandma!” they shouted, clamoring to her embrace, to her yielding generous bosom, her tinted hair melding with their own golden curls.

My stomach would tighten at a little at these unexpected arrivals. Her presence changed everything. She became the center of attention without even trying. Though she made herself useful, always willing to cook or tidy up, the size of our emotional baggage filled the tiny bungalow. As good as a stone wall for keeping us apart, it crowded out much of our shared enjoyment.

Now, with only her spirit and memory beside me, it is the enjoyment I remember, and mourn. Her style still guides me. She had an eye for good design, fostered by her time spent studying at the School of Design in Chicago. She would appreciate the spare modern lines of a daybed I purchased at a local tag sale, and my choice of a vintage rag rug to cover it.

Her turquoise “donkey beads” are back in fashion. I saw them in magazines this spring and wondered where hers ever disappeared to. At a loft sale in the city, I found them (or their cousins) and snapped them up for 50¢. My new accessory for summer, they are good as a hug to salve my grieving.

The experts tell us each revisited place or “major event” can reopen the wounds of loss. It is necessary, too, we are counseled, for our healing. That is approximately what I tell my son when he finds me weeping on the Fourth of July, alone at the breakfast table. An emotionally able young man, he comforts me. I guess my mothering has paid off.

When a friend, who has just lost her brother, asks me how I’m doing at our communal picnic, I know enough to tell her straight. “It’s hard,” I say, “I miss Jane.” Her eyes tell me she can relate to this feeling, and then they light up as she tells me about the party they have just celebrated for her brother’s posthumous CD release.      

Known in musical circles as “Flash,” he had recently written about his life seeming to pass in “a flash.” He could not have known he would be dead within weeks of this pronouncement; he was a young and apparently healthy man with an aneurysm waiting to spring.

My mother’s death was more predictable. She was clearly failing in her last year, but not even the doctors could tell us how long she might have. I often wish I could have brought her here once more, to one more pool party on a hot summer night, beside her grandchildren and her friends. Regret can amplify grief, the experts say.

As I watch the fireworks explode over the river on Saturday, I’ll remember my mother in her summer whites, a red bandanna tied around her crisp visor throwing up her arms with delight at the spectacle. Will I miss her any less next year?