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jtimson@globeandmail.com

Mother's Day - with its attendant Hallmark hoopla - is looming. Ads remind us to order our flowers, make our brunch reservations, buy that Tiffany trinket. (One even suggests: Give her motorcycle lessons and "watch her go from Mom to Momma.")

In fact, in this economy, buy anything, please. Your mom will love it.

Since my mother died a little more than two years ago, I haven't quite figured out how to experience what is a very changed day, even though my two grown children never fail to acknowledge it sweetly. Or perhaps "hilariously" is a better word, as my son is a connoisseur of tasteless Mother's Day cards.

At my mother's funeral, a number of people who had also lost their mothers told me they thought about them every single day of their lives.

We who are still in the crucible of mothering - no matter how old our children are - can't quite fathom that the entirely imperfect relationship we have with our daughters and sons will stay vividly with them for the rest of their lives, and well beyond ours.

They will give us enormous credit ("Mom always told me ..." ); they will no doubt apportion serious blame ("my mother could never acknowledge ..."), but they will never let us go. It's an almost unimaginable power that makes Mother's Day seem superfluous.

My mourning for my mother was deep and deliberate. When she died I wrote a column about how much I would miss my daily phone call to her, and many readers wrote in about their own connection with their mothers. Just recently, a man named Vijay e-mailed to say he was with his mom in India and wondered if I would send that particular column to him. After I did, he wrote again, saying he hoped I had found a meaningful way to fill the time in the morning that used to be devoted to my mom.

The answer is no, Vijay, I didn't: That time just got swallowed up by life, and every day I miss her cracking good conversation, her unswerving interest in me and in all those she loved, and most of all, her voice.

But I did manage to find a way to keep her close: Every morning I put on her beautiful ring. It's a little fancy for me - I think it's called a dinner ring, on the art deco side, with diamonds and little sapphires. I am not dressed until it's on my finger, and there it stays until I'm ready for sleep.

It's what's called a keepsake, although I don't find it to be merely a sentimental object (except for how the blue of the sapphires reminds me of her eyes). It's talismanic - she's there, no matter what challenges lurk in my day. It's aspirational - I can be almost as charming as she was if I wear her ring. It's wholly comforting and it's even a little wacky. Occasionally I look like Maxwell Smart, talking not into my shoe, but into my ring.

I know I am not alone. My husband wears his late father's rather ornate cufflinks almost every day, which requires him to buy French cuffed shirts and thus honour his father's sartorial splendour.

Of course, there is an obvious drawback to wearing these keepsakes. What if we lose the ring, the cufflinks, the bracelets? We can never replace what is priceless.

And if you have a lot of siblings, you'd better have a mother with a lot of rings or at least enough jewellery to go around. Despite all the horrors we hear about divvying up the stuff after a parent's death, it can be a bonding experience to go through a parent's effects together and choose what is most meaningful. Or, better yet, choose with the parent when she or he is still alive.

I listen to my friends talk about their caregiver travails as their mothers become frail, disoriented or even gloriously imperious on their final descent. One friend mordantly refers to herself as an "elderhostage." I react to these stories with a guilty mixture of envy and relief. That part is over for me. I didn't have to watch my mother deteriorate too much. She was sharp and funny at 90 and then, suddenly, she was gone.

As for the ring ... maybe they should include a few inanimate objects in death notices: survived by her two adoring children and a very nice dinner ring (my brother got a painting).

These objects are about far more than an "estate." They have enormous life and love in them, continuity and comfort, and in my case as I go about my day, twinkling blue sapphires that see everything I do and even, I like to think, what's around the corner just out of my sight.