Category Archives: In the Company of Cloth

notes from a quilter, collage artist, fabric collector

Mourning not morning

I wake to the cries of the mourning doves. Coo, coo, they call. Then the dog’s sigh. He hops up for his morning pets moments after.

How the day starts.

A light frost this morning underscores The Globe’s reporting that the runners in the 130th Boston Marathon will face slightly cooler temps than usual today.

Last week with the race on the horizon, I was prompted to remember that when we toured CU in April 2013, the Marathon Bombing happened. The days that followed were a weird split screen between highlights of the campus and the horror coming out of Boston.

When we landed at Logan we weren’t sure we’d be able to get home. Cabs were not allowed. Busses weren’t running.

We could however retrieve our car. Once off the Turnpike, we drove through the part of Newton that abuts Watertown where an intense police search was going on.

It was spooky. Both towns locked down. Very few cars on the road.

I look back and go, “Huh. So that was Danny’s introduction to CU/Boulder.”

The gorgeous plantings at the Gardner Museum were food for the soul yesterday.

They also pained me as reminders of our trip to a butterfly garden north of Denver about this time last year.

Once again I lament the stupidest things. How I took endless close ups of the tarantulas next door or that I recorded several two-minute videos of fluttering insects. And only these two pictures of Danny. They’re not even decent pictures.

The Italian marble and sculptures also put me in mind of our trip to Rome and Florence in 2024.

He had blond hair that season. I liked it

Today I take Finn to the vet for a check up and finish the Raskin memoir. I might bake some shortbread to bring our neighbor who broke his hip. I don’t know how people get through early grief while working or tending to a family.

I wake at 5:45

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I wake at 5:45

into his absence. Or at 6:30. Or at 7:12.

“You’re in shock,” we keep getting told. “You’re in shock.” I’m not sure I know what that means but one hint is how skewed time is — the calendar has almost no meaning.

What do you mean it’s less than three weeks till May 1? I thought it was a month and a half from now. When did I travel to Colorado? When did I get back? Wasn’t it like two months ago? Has it even been a month since he took his life?

No. Not even one month.

That’s in four days. THAT point in time is rock hard clear.

The number of times I can’t find my phone throughout any given day has easily doubled. Is this what they call grief fog?

At lunch, I cry. On the phone with BZ in the evening, I cry. After breakfast, writing three thank you notes, I cry. Talking to a neighbor on the curb about her father’s suicide, I cry. Lying down to sleep for the night, I cry.

I try not to think about that last day because it’s so traumatizing, but even to remember ordinary days with him in them, ordinary memories of a family of four, creates a different kind of agony.

Today I will drive 28 minutes north and talk to a book group about The Weight of Cloth. I’m bringing some indigo-dyed cloth. I’m bringing a pile of books that I consulted for research. I am bringing a determination to let the two hours serve as a healthy distraction.

I must end with gratitude. The cards, flowers, food and offers for food keep arriving. It’s astonishing, really. Thank you Kim. Thank you Risa and Kris, Pamela and Joel, Ellen. Thank you Barbara and Candy. Thank you Mark and Ruthann and Brenda. Thank you Diane. That’s just the last few days!

Note: at this point, people are apologizing for responding “late.” In this realm of communication, there is no “late.” A card with beautiful remembrances of Danny will be welcome any day from now until my last day and arriving on an otherwise quiet mail day turns out to be rather perfect timing.

Walking and list-making

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This list was compiled on a dog walk a week ago.

Sights our Danny won’t see again: telephone poles, pine cones, his brother, a plate of scrambled eggs that I’ve made for him, the Flatirons, Ella, his own face in the mirror, his father’s face, a 6-inch rainbow trout resting in the palm of his hand.

4/4/26

Yesterday’s comments arrived in my mailbox as a series of small miracles. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Advice to the grieving

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Advice to the grieving can be at once risible and wise. Take for example the advice to get a hobby.

Get a hobby?

Can you imagine shopping for supplies, trying to learn techniques you’ve never done before, sorting out where to work on your project and where to put all those supplies in your house when you’re not working on it — all while in the throes of grief?

Which is to say, I feel gratitude that I already having a hobby (though I never call my quilting that).

To have supplies, lots of supplies, to have established places where those supplies live, to have techniques I’ve practiced for decades — these are truly things to be grateful for. Quilting. It goes on. I go on.

But here’s an example of how even a semi-distracting hobby never takes you far from the person you lost.

This morning, I decided this beast of an Epstein Quilt needed basting down. I’m sick of my thread getting caught on all the pins. I’m sick of my fabric squares shifting around. I should’ve done this last week but here I am.

In the process of basting the layers, I stitched the quilt to my pajama bottoms. It happens.

Here’s the thing. The last time I did this, I was in Longmont and Danny was sitting across from me. I lifted the little house quilt up from my lap to reveal a V-shape of thread where the quilt was attached to my pants and he smiled.

This morning when I lifted up this quilt to find myself threaded to my pj bottoms, it occurred to me: the last time I did this, it made Danny smile.

And then: that was probably the last time I saw him smile.

So much for the so-called distractions of a hobby.