Grieving and Healing at Once

My mother passed away on April 27. Three weeks ago at this point, but feels like a lifetime. So much feels changed--even that which didn't have anything to do with Mom feels different now. I won't go into details. My sister covered it pretty well in her blog, "Cumulus," http://cumulus.blogspot.com/2009/04/all-shall-be-well.html (the obituary is given in her post after that). Where my sister left off chronologically in the "All Shall Be Well" post began another week of up-and-downs, Mom looking like she might fight back to a certain extent, but then slipping away. We spent our final weekend with her in the hospice room at the hospital, reading to her, listening to her favorite 40s music, holding her hand for hours at a time. Although a tremendously difficult time, I also feel so grateful that we did have the opportunity to say goodbye, to hear the stories of her friends and relatives as they called us during those days, to share memories, laughter, and tears with my sibs. I still haven't wrapped my head around her absence yet--and I know that will take some time. It took me almost a year to feel mostly back to rights after my father passed away, with "moments" extending for years after that, and his passing, by the time it came, was much more expected. Mom's leaving us is sudden, wrenching, like a conversation we were in the middle of, interrupted, and never finished.

The loose ends are innumerable, and yet I have no regrets. There were unfinished things, certainly--projects we were working on together, conferences we had registered for together, things we had planned to do which now won't get done. Or, at least, won't get done by the two of us together. But that's life--that's being human. There is never a time in our lives when every single conversation we've ever wanted to have will be had. There is never a time when we will have done every single thing we want to have done. After all, doesn't every completed plan bring it's own host of new hopes, new dreams? Doesn't every finished conversation lead to new discussions, new questions to ponder, new avenues to explore?

I've discovered, in this period of losing my mother, that I'm not a big fan of the "live like every day is your last" philosophy. It feels too pressured, too intense, too unnatural. Mom would've hated it if I'd approached every conversation with her like I might never see her again. I'm not entirely sure Mom loved having our "goodbye" conversations in the hospital. (In fact, I'm fairly certain she was pretty ticked off by the whole situation. But that's Mom--she hated limitations.) But for all that, when Mom's ability to communicate was so limited in those last days, she was always able to get out "I love you," and she did that every time she saw us. And that's what matters--that she knew I loved her, and that I knew she loved me. And therefore, no regrets. Things I'm sorry we weren't be able to do together? Things I still wish I could talk to her about? Certainly. But no unfinished business, nothing between us that should've been said and wasn't, nothing that I wished I'd done, or she'd done, differently.

Mom taught me to quilt. I moved from picking quilts out of books and catalogues and asking her if she "could make that one for me," to asking her advice on what would be a good first project. I did it initially to give her something to take her mind of Dad's illness at the time, but it stuck. I was hooked. And as time wore on, I loved having something that she and I could share like that. During the years, I've frequently called her with questions like, "Mom, how do you square a block," or "Mom, I ran out of fabric two pieces too soon--what do I do?" or, "Mom, is there a way to make a whonky block straight?" Mom taught me the right way to do things, and then she also taught me how to fix it when you did it the wrong way. Certainly seam rippers can be involved, but other times a black Sharpie or a good steam iron, a bunch of pins, and a really heavy book will do the trick. Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to know when "good enough is good enough."

Which brings us back to my renewed commitment to this blog, to Tessellations. One of the first things I did, after Mom had her initial double-stroke, was to stop by her house and pick up a number of her UFOs, knowing that no matter what happened at that point, she'd be unlikely to ever be back to quilting at that level of detail again. At that point, I was hoping that she'd be able to see them finished. Now I still plan to finish them, and have since taken additional ones to finish, in honor of Mom. Partly because I know it annoys Mom to no end that she didn't get them finished before she passed on, and partly for my own healing process. I also know that several were intended as gifts to my sibs and I like knowing that I am able to help Mom give those last gifts. Knowing that Mom was pleased that she had indoctrinated one of her daughters into her beloved quilting world, knowing that Mom enjoyed swapping ideas with me, fabric, patterns, and going on quilt-related trips together, knowing how much enjoyment we both got out of playing show n' tell with each other, I feel like the best way I can honor Mom is to finish some of her UFOs, and begin taking myself as a quilter more seriously. I feel more inspired to build my skills now, to be worthy of the large amount of fabric I inherited from her stash and her beloved quilter's sewing machine that she'd only been able to use for a short while. At some level, at least for the near future, I almost have the sense that I'm quilting for two--I'm doing it for me and for Mom. And I can only hope that I do her UFOs justice.

I'm finding myself playing "WWMD?" as I begin the process of working on her UFOs. What Would Mom Do? I imagine I'll be thinking that a lot for the rest of my life--in quilting, in parenting, in a lot of my decision-making. WWMD?

So Tessellations will become my journal of finishing Mom's UFOs, of trying to answer WWMD at the same time as I allow myself freedom to add my own thoughts to Mom's projects. As I think about it now, Mom was fascinated by tessellations in quilting for a time--I'm sure I'll find some tessellated patterns among her completed quilts. So that's entirely suitable. I also look at the title of the blog as newly redefined, at least for a time, as "Tessellations: Where Mom and Me Intersect," as my quilting and hers combine.

I won't always have profound things to say. I'll post when I finally have all the additional fabric added neatly to my stash (still a work in progress), or I'll post a frustrated rant about not finding a fabric that works. I'll also atill do my own projects here and there. But as I go through the journey of finishing Mom's projects, I'm sure I'll be learning about quilting, about Mom, and about life in general. Probably mostly about Mom. And I'm looking forward to that.