Ghosts in the Garden, an excerpt

One day I took my mother to the garden. It was a warmish day, just us. She made her way slowly down the gentlest decline (holding my arm, sometimes touching tree branches), then chose a bench beneath a tree inside the woods. I sat beside her, and between us fell a triangle of sun. A gardener was at work across the path; people walked by. We sat there peacefully, my mother and I, a wedge of yellow sun between us, but otherwise in shadow. We talked of nothing much, and it...