A Baby Quilt from Great Grandma

A Baby Quilt from Great Grandma

Three years ago my family went on a magical vacation…a really really magical vacation…with my parents, my siblings, and their families.

We spent some time on the Yucatan Peninsula touring through a list of the most fascinating ancient structures, seriously incredible cenotes, and some unique and colorful small towns.

I have so many wonderful memories from this trip…biking through a rainforest, climbing temple steps, swimming in dark underground waters, and carrying my mom in her wheelchair down overgrown trails to see hidden ruins. It is a time I will never forget.

For a number of reasons.

One of these reasons happened the day after we came home.

That morning I got a phone call from my dad.

His mom had just been taken to the hospital and he was on his way to meet her there.

That afternoon he called again. Grandma was not responsive.

Soon my siblings and I were gathered there at the hospital and that night were all together with my grandma as she quietly slipped away.

That magical time and the night I lost my first grandma are forever melted into one long memory making it bittersweet.

We spent the next few months, after my Grandma’s passing, cleaning out her home and all the items that she had collected over a lifetime….and boy did she have quite the collections!

Silverware, shoes, kitchen gadgets, table cloths, jewelry, tea cups, and clothes…SO MANY CLOTHES!!! Clothes from every decade she lived through. It was AMAZING.

But the bulk of the clothing was from the 80s. The era my Grandma worked at a bank wearing shoulder padded dresses, power suits, and pumps.

At the time we were cleaning out Grandma’s house I was obsessed with The Golden Girls. (Ok, I’m still a little obsessed…I’ve loved that show forever.) And as we sorted through clothing I couldn’t help but think about how many of the items could have been taken directly from the show….and with Halloween approaching I talked my siblings into a Grandma Golden Girls Halloween Costume picture taking extravaganza…that my grandma would have loved:

I can not look at these photos without smiling….Oh my gosh. I just love my siblings so much. And each of us are so much like the characters we dressed up as. That afternoon….oh man…I swear, years later my cheeks still hurt from laughing.

But it wasn’t just clothes, and the good times we had remembering how we used to play dress up in my grandmas wardrobe, that we found while sorting through her things.

Among other precious items I found an unfinished baby quilt.

It was flannel and tied and pinned but not bound.

And so I took it home and stashed it away until recently.

My little sister, the sweet Rose of our Golden Girls, had a miracle baby…a little boy that I ADORE…and for his first birthday I pulled out that quilt. I bound, washed, and fluffed it and was able to give it to him as a gift from his great grandma.

What a cool thing to be able to give!

As I said HERE, this has been a season of loss for me and my family….and now we are starting a season of firsts….first Christmas without any of my very supportive and always present grandparents….first birthdays without my always involved mom…and what it feels like to grapple with grief and joy living in the same room.

Goodbyes are hard to navigate. I cry a lot….but I also have an extreme and ever abiding sense of gratitude for those who have help shape me into the person I am becoming.

Those I’ve lost are still with me. Not just in moments where they appear in quilts on birthdays, a familiar scent that takes my breath away, or a song playing on the radio…but in my heart and coursing through my veins.

But the quilts help.

They do help.

I am lucky to have quilts from each grandma and my mom…something to wrap up in when I am feeling lonely, sad, overwhelmed…when I need to feel like a kid again and told that everything will be ok.

Because it will.

No, the sadness will never entirely go away…but neither will the love.

The love will carry on and on.

And in the meantime a return to quilting has helped me start sewing back together the pieces of my heart.

Because, as I have discovered, quilting helps you sort through the folds and scraps and deep cuts and stitch them up into something beautiful….which is just one of the many reasons why I think quilting is so magical.

Magical….just like my siblings who will humor their older sister for a grandma inspired Golden Girls photo shoot.

-liZ