Labour of love

I'll have people with me this week, so the next post will be the week after. By then I'll be making the Christmas pudding (see Something Else to Eat), as well as learning (at last) how to deal properly with the full range of social media and chat about my food memoir when it comes out next March - it's already featured in a Listener article.
              Last Monday, Labour Day, was the 25th anniversary of my younger son Patrick's death - he would have been 43 now. As you can imagine, I knew it was bound to be a difficult day. So I took the precaution of asking a very good friend to come and spend it with me.
              First we went to Patrick's tree in the Botanic Gardens, then to Harvey's plaque down the road in the Karori Cemetery rose garden. We took the two lovely little bunches of flowers that my neighbour had brought over specially for me that morning.
              Patrick's tree is so tall now (like him) that we can only just reach high enough to lodge the flowers in its lower branches. As for Harvey, I'd seen earlier that the little in-ground flower holder I'd put there for him before (and will replace) had vanished when they redid that rose bed - you may recall it was ailing earlier, now it's been beautifully replanted. So I rose to the occasion, took down his favourite whisky glass, and set it in the soil to hold his flowers. When I told a friend that night, she said, "He'll be saying, Well, here's the water, but where's the whisky?"