*After my husband’s funeral, my son drove me to a remote road and said…

After my husband’s funeral, my son drove me to a remote road and said this is where you get off….

My name is Eleanor Grace Whitmore. I’m 68 years old, and for nearly five decades, I was a wife, a mother, and the quiet heart of Hazelbrook Orchards a small, organic apple farm nestled in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. My hands, though now stiff with arthritis, still remember every step of turning dough into sourdough loaves and pruning trees at dawn with Richard, my husband.

Three weeks ago, I buried him. Richard and I had been married since 1981. We built everything together this orchard, this home, this family.

And yet, the morning after his funeral, I realized that I might not have built what I thought I had. Or maybe it just wasn’t enough to hold on to my children. Richard died of pancreatic cancer.

Fourteen months of watching a man of the earth waste away, his strength stolen bit by bit. He didn’t want the kids to know. Let them live their lives a little longer without this shadow, he had whispered to me one night, his voice thick with morphine.

And because I loved him, I agreed. But in truth, I already knew. Our children Darren and Samantha had grown distant long before the diagnosis.

Darren, the eldest, had carved out a fast-paced career in Boston’s financial world and hadn’t been home for more than a handful of weekends in over a decade. Samantha, on the other hand, floated from one failed wellness business to another, always funded by Richard’s savings and always in need of just one more loan. I had hoped that grief would bring them back to the core of who we were.

That they would remember the orchard. The family dinners. The love that built this house.

But when they arrived for the funeral, I didn’t see children mourning their father. I saw professionals calculating an estate. The night after the funeral, I sat alone in the kitchen, staring at the worn wood of our dining table.

I told them we could sort through Richard’s things together the next day. It was a small gesture. A mother’s way of making space for memory…