Between the Sprit and the Dust: Love Letters to Strangers, Part 2

...being a second annual contribution, however humble, to a more crinkly, quilt-comforted world.

The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

SUE MONK KIDD, The Secret Life of Bees

Greetings, fellow travelers, and lemme tell you this: on the list of quilts I am making IN MY HEAD (both the list, and the quilts) there are about 50 people who are due for some quilty-blog-love-letters and I have such grand ideas for you all!... but instead I make scrap quilts and give them to strangers, because they are patterns I wanted to try or color combos that seemed interesting or opportunistic usages of leftovers, but are not *just right* for my listees. So just know that if you're reading this there's a better than even chance you are ON the LIST (unless I made you one already, and then you are on the SECOND list, which is for when the first list is done) and I probably also have a Pinterest page devoted to you, which is probably like 500 quilts deep.  It's the thought that counts? (No, really, it's my life's mission to do this, and so it will get done. Eventually.)

Scrappy Brights Race Quilt

I do hope, however, that these 5 orphaned quilts are just right for someone, as they are going to Mercyful Quilts, run by the kind-hearted Bernie at Needle & Foot.  Mercyful Quilts gives quilts to folks who are dying in Mercy Hospital, Sacramento CA, and is one of the recipients of the Hands2Help quilt drive run by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict every year.  This mission of providing a little down-home comfort to terminal cases in the hospital struck a chord with me, because my mom was in the hospital when she died, some 13 (!) years back now, and it was just as clinical and depressing as you might expect; whereas my dad was at home, in hospice, on a sea of morphine, and that seemed like a considerably more preferable way to go.

Blue & White stripe 2 color quilt, "Chill"

One of the things I remember clearly about my folks dying was exactly how surreal and clock-stopping it was.  How disorienting and sad and scary, even for my sibs and me as fully adult people, to suddenly be in a world where we simply didn't have parents anymore - no matter how old you are or how prepared you think you are, it seems, this is still a mighty blow.  And sort of impossible and silly, too, like maybe they're just punking us and have really just boarded a plane to Vegas to get away from their damn kids for awhile?  As Bean wisely noted, after her mom passed, "It is absurd to me - ABSURD - that my mother will never meet my children."  Because it doesn't seem like that should even be a possibility, yet here we are.

In my dad's case, there was this exceptional hospice nurse lady - I forget her name, sadly, because she was a rock-like, clear-eyed Charon to Dad in his weeks before passing, and a wise counselor to us left behind, in our time of confusion and grief.  And I thought how amazing a gift it was, to be able to escort so many people to the very brink of the unknown with such utter sangfroid and tact and sensitivity, without ever losing yourself in the drama and sadness of it.  So hats off to you, good lady, whoever you were.  You appeared when we needed you and you gave us exactly what we needed, and left us grateful and less at sea, and that is more than can be said for most occupations (ahem, looking at you, plumbers and auto mechanics.)

Scrappy Neutral Strip Diamonds

Anyway, this morbid trip down memory lane, prompted in part by Keanu Reeves' touching surprise answer on Colbert awhile back to the "where do we go when we die?" question, was the impetus for donating to Mercyful Quilts this year, in hopes of providing help to those nurses who are right there on the brink with the dying and their families, who try to bring a little color and softness to what may otherwise be a relatively sterile, unforgiving environment of hospital palliative care.  And if a bereaved person wants the quilt when it is all over, they can take it home as a treasured memory.... or, in my case, they have carte blanche, if it helps, to ritually set the quilts on fire or cut them to ribbons in anger and sadness and wishing to never see it again, as emblematic of what may have been one of the saddest points of their lives.  Hey man: whatever gets you through, I back it 100%.

Scrappy 9-Patches

So: five quilts to Mercyful, one for each of my siblings and me, to honor those who honor the dying.  And for every other orphan, of any age, and to the nameless woman who held our collective hand and calmly helped with funeral arrangements and kicked off the healing reminiscences when we were still awkwardly trying to maintain our best oh-shit-we-have-company small talk; and to the nurses and caregivers of Mercy Hospital, and everywhere sad, scared people look around hopefully for someone else to be the expert at dying when clearly no one has much personal experience in the matter:  I salute you.  It can't be easy being on those particular front lines every day, but many of the rest of us, more sheltered from that final inevitability, appreciate the sensible, stolid escort, whether we are the one getting on the plane, or the ones waving goodbye, sadly, from the ground.

Rainbow Colorwash Quarter-Square Triangles and 4-Patches

May we all know a little peace before dying.

Gratefully,

Astrid