Wednesday, February 13, 2019

I drove (!) to my friend's house today to drop off the baby quilt. She didn't want to see me, too many feelings on the eve of meeting her son on Friday after losing her daughter in 2017. Oh, my heart aches.

On Friday I'll light candles and send wishes for safe passage to her and her babe. And her husband.

Tonight I'm attending a writer's gathering at the library sponsored by Hugo House (named after Richard Hugo, a local poet).

I've written here before about this loss. The mother's grief, the father's grief is incomprehensible. What to do with our grief, those of us who cared for them, the midwives and doctors and nurses? I have come to that terrible shore on my knees, willing the pain to pass through. It will never go away. It gets easier to hold it and care for it.

The thousands of stitches and hours I spent on the quilt was a way through. I once read about a pioneer woman who said that her hopes and pain were all stitched into a quilt. As she said "what that quilt knows about me..." And women back then made quilts from clothing of the dead. Lordy. A way to put grief to use.

The snow is melting, revealing broken plants and ruts in the earth.

Healing and broken, all of us. Healing and broken.

5 comments:

My life so far said...

I think a quilt is a lovely gift. That must have been hard, her not wanting to see you. I like the idea of making a quilt from the clothes of the dead. We are so far removed from the dead in our modern society, and yet we all die. Yesterday morning an old lady died in her wheelchair at the front of the hospital, waiting for her family to bring the car around.

She quietly slipped away, avoided the suffering of cancer treatment. Not a bad way to die really.

At the other end of life though, I can't imagine having to deal with death. It's heartbreaking.

Elizabeth said...

Beautiful --

Ms. Moon said...

Healing and broken, all of us.
Yes. ALL of us.
I think of the quilts women have made forever, each one a secret language of stitches holding so much.
I love you, Beth. Your heart is a lantern of pure flame in this dark world.

Sabine said...

Healing is hard work. Thank you for making the quilt for your friend.

37paddington said...

Broken and healing, all at the same time. That helps somehow. Thank you.