My mom loved making quilts. She would spend hours piecing together tiny bits of fabric to hand sew beautiful, beautiful quilts.
She made one for us when we got married and it is my most treasured wedding gift. Each time when she found out I was expecting another baby (or that my sister-in-law was expecting) she would start planning and cutting and piecing and sewing so that when the baby was born, a quilt would be ready.
Asa, Justus and Elias…as well my brother’s oldest kids, all have special quilts from Grammy. (As a matter of fact, they each carried them as we walked into her funeral because they are such a precious part of who she was.)
In the final months before my mom died, she continued to get weaker and weaker…and I remember laying on my bed one day crying out to God. I asked him to help me to feel joy again. I had been feeling so sad for so many months as I watched my mom die…and I didn’t know how I could feel happy again. How any of us could feel happy again.
It was just a few short weeks later that we found out that we were expecting (Malachi). The news of our pregnancy gave our whole family something exciting and fun to look forward to and talk about. The joy of this news was a refreshing relief and joy in the midst of sorrow and pain.
I remember how my mom looked when I told her. We were both smiling at each other…and then we suddenly started to cry at the same time…both of us knowing that she wouldn’t live to meet this little one.
Three months later, she died.
About two months after Malachi was born…I received a box in the mail from Pat, a neighbor and friend of my mom’s. Inside the box was a quilt…with embroidered squares that I remembered watching my mom stitch years ago. The quilt was complete and beautiful. I sobbed as I looked at each beautiful stitch. I had not been expecting to receive this gift.
Pat had enclosed a note letting me know that after my mom had found out that I was going to have this baby, she had directed her to go down to her craft room and get the quilt she had started years earlier. She asked Pat to please finish it for her and give it to me after the baby was born. She also told Pat to be sure to tell me to USE the quilt…and that it was alright for the baby to spit up on it! (My mom never lost her sense of humor!!)
What a priceless gift that quilt is. All of her quilts are.
Last weekend when I was in Kansas going through my mom’s craft room…I looked through pieces and pieces of fabric she had bought to make more quilts before she got sick. I brought most of the fabric home with me. I’m not much into quilting…but someday, I’d like to make each of my boys another quilt from Grammy.
And…for Christmas this year, I’m going to make my nephew, Austin, a quilt from Grammy’s fabric. It won’t be nearly as fancy as one she would have made. I’ll only tie it and bind it, instead of piecing it and spending hours hand quilting it.
But it will be special and it will still be made with love.
And it might be stained with tears.
