remembrance

It's been three years since I've seen my second quilt, Star Stories.

I always have a fear of looking at my finished work. I can always find the mistakes, and in Star Stories I know I made many. I've learned a great deal since I made it, but it was the quilt that sparked my interest in using reclaimed, shared, and repurposed fabrics. Forget what's "expected." In this case, sentimental value was more important.

The quilt was displayed at Lexie's wedding reception, even though it wasn't finished; I raced to get it completed and sent off, and in my haste I never thought to get a straightforward photo of it. (What can I say? It was only my second quilt. I had no idea I'd stick with this hobby.)

I've had a couple of projects on my mind today, projects I haven't added to my quilt list or spoken much about, but which have been difficult to stop thinking about. One has been brewing behind the scenes for a while, and another I just committed to today.

If they had a common denominator, I would describe them as "compassion projects." Some projects suggest themselves: baby quilts, marriage quilts, life-change quilts. These are different. I think I'd go as far as to describe them as "love projects" — projects you take on because in your heart, you know you must in order to be the kind of person you want to be.

Neither have names. I'm open to suggestions.

Dad -

I didn’t really call you that while you were alive, and it feels strange to call you that now, but I didn’t know any other way to start this letter.

I’ve become a person who grumbles at roadside memorials for victims of traffic accidents but who writes something about you every year on the anniversary of your death. I wondered about that for a number of years before I realized that I was closer to your death than I was to your life, and I’ve spent the years since trying to come to terms with your absence.

This entry covers it better than most:

Loss came through tweets and emails, a drip of information at a time. First a note from a tech staffer saying that someone had died, with a pointer to more information, including the name.

I saw it at work, and I wondered who it would be, whose name had to take on a different status. Death is so final it seems that we should all be able to feel it when it happens, to know that something is missing that wasn’t missing ten minutes ago. But it’s not like that. We have to be told, and for me it was via email.