Today is the 9 year mark since my friend Ellen died, much too young.
She was a beautiful human being, both inside and out.I became friends with her through Hip Stitch - I taught her sewing and she taught me
to be a better person.She left 3 small children, who are now teenagers & preteens, and I think about them,
and Walt, her husband.
I met Helen this week, who came to Hip Stitch for the 1st time with her 1st quilt.
As we talked, I teared up. She worked on the quilt while she was caretaking her father, who was dying.
She would come to his home and sew the blocks together, and it made him happy.
She told me he passed away almost 20 years ago, but she couldn’t until recently take out the quilt top
to finish it without crying and grieving her father.
And then one day she could work on it. And she finished it.
And she felt a bit the joy her father felt about the quilt.
I teared up because memories of the summer of 2016 came flooding back - when I was my mom’s caretaker as she was dying of ovarian cancer. How I’d travel from home to her apartment to work, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I had my mom’s train case to carry all my toiletries, and the zipper finally wore out. So that summer, as she slept more and more and I was there just to be in the room with her, I got out her sewing machine and sewed a new train case. And every time I use it, I think of that summer. And the grieving becomes less and less - it never goes away, mind you, but the joy and the good memories become stronger and the tears aren't as frequent.
Why do we create? We create to heal, to make memories, to tell someone we love them, to share our talents and ourselves with others. We create to remember.
