Early june is always a time for reminiscing and remembering the ones I loved and lost.
Yesterday would have been my mum's 71st birthday, so like every year since 1997, I bought her some peonies.
In '97, the peonies were her 44th birthday gift. She drowned in a sailing accident in a very sudden storm when I was 20 on the 7th of june, three days after her birthday. She was found the next day, and on a whim I brought the birthday peonies when we went to identify her.
Nice people there and it was a nice place, not cold or impersonal at all, although her hair had been done much to tight, and of course she was naked because of her wet clothes.
Ruffling her hair solved the first problem, draping the peonies all over her the second

, and we spent a long time there getting used to the idea of her not being alive anymore.
Apparently suddenly having a body covered in peonies posed a bit of a dilemma for the workers at the funeral parlor after we left, with the coolers being too cold for flowers.

They gracefully solved the issue by turning them into a bouquet again, and that's how my mum came to be cremated a week later with a bunch of rather wilted peonies as the main bouquet on her coffin, even though there was a sea of fresh flowers all around it.

(In the Netherlands, the law says the dead have to be buried/cremated within 6 working days after dying, I understand it's very different in the UK, which I find fascinating.)
Anyway, this is why I've bought peonies on the 4th of june for 27 years, and why I gave the peonies back to the water on the 7th, most years accompanied by a swim and a beer shared between myself and my mum.
However, it being so long ago, early june has more and more become a time to remember all the ones I've loved and lost, so today was the perfect day to use Goonergal's plate again to remember her and enjoy some fond memories.
I'm sorry, there are more greens on that plate than is proper in memory of Goonergal, and more carbs as well (Aldi's fish fillet á la bordelaise is 8 grams of carbs a portion, according to the package), but I quite like our lost ones sometimes being closer to mind, even if it hurts as well.