grief | Pattern and Outrage : Dee Mallon

Jack last week

Jack died on Monday. After a month of being pretty chipper with a good appetite, he really declined on Sunday. He could hardly walk. We knew it was time. The prednisone prescribed for the lymphoma really gave us another entire month with him. He came on two trips with us (Wellfleet and the White Mountains) — trips that we would have hired a dog sitter for and left him home, had he been well. Those were wonderful trips, with so much quiet time together.

On Monday, after I cooked up about a pound and a half of bacon, I brought him to the vet. Actually, I scheduled a home visit first but when I heard the price ($500), decided we would do the best we could to make one last trip to the vet tolerable. And, they were wonderful. I brought a big bag of bacon – which meant no muzzle was required. He growled and snapped once, but then put his head in my lap and let himself be ministered to. It went so fast. I think he was gone before the needle was even retracted. After awhile, we bundled him in his blanket and some pink shot silk that I had brought along and brought him home. We buried him under the catalpa.

Even though we used this quilt in the car for the ride to the vet, I put it back. It helps me somehow, for it to be there, even though he isn’t.

Jack was born in Puerto Rico and abandoned at the age of two. He was left tied to a fence for a couple of weeks. Someone took pity on him and brought him food now and then until a shelter on the North Shore rescued him and we were lucky enough to find him. He weighed 17 pounds and was a nervous wreck.

It took me a while to understand that he was terrified of cameras. Eventually, I think because I invested in a decent camera and learned to use a manual setting where no flash was required, he got over that. And, I’m not sure he ever figured out that phones have cameras (I’ve barely figured it out). But because of that, we have very few pictures of his ‘middle years’ with us.

He wouldn’t let anyone touch him for a long while, and then only on the top of the head for a long time after that. Finally, his haunches were allowed. I loved the fact that he eventually let me rub his belly. At first, too, he made no sounds at all. For a couple of months, we actually thought he might be mute. But he came along.

He was a hefty 32 pounds for most of the last several years. He groaned when my husband gave him the special neck scratch. And he was so devoted to me. Followed me from couch to chair to bathroom and back again. In fact, I didn’t close the downstairs bathroom pocket door all the way, because he wanted to be able to poke his head in. Whenever I left the house, his primary occupation was waiting for my return.

This past Christmas.

At a time he was still afraid of cameras.

We are missing him.

8.5 x 11", collage

(Notes and collage from last week):

Well, after many days working outside at a garden site and shuffling school forms around, calling guidance counselors, dropping off forgotten track items to the high school, ETC.!! , I have been downstairs, which is to say, in my studio.

I just made three things — none of which I set out to do, all of which I like very much, and all of which make the pile of things UNDONE even bigger.

So, what to do? Force myself to finish before I play? Just stop binding my pieces?

That last option is not a bad alternative at all. Arlee, whom I discovered both in various flickr pools and in this month’s Cloth Paper Scissors, showcased a beautiful quilt with texture galore and unfinished, tattered edges.

The collage above was one of the pieces I made when I perhaps should have been finishing other things. The text is printed on linen and on fake vellum — both fed through an inkjet. They are scraps from my quilt, “Valentine to Iraq” (below), made some time ago. I made the off-white paper with newspaper inclusions while teaching a UU religious ed class a couple of years ago.

Quilt, about 3.5' x 20"

This quilt was coming together as the American death toll in Iraq reached 3,000. I originally planned to stitch 3,000 “x’s” on the quilt, representing the final kisses of mothers to their never-to-return soldier children, but stopped at a little over 1,000. It gave me a sober appreciation for how large a number 3,000 is. And now, of course, the toll is much higher. And we’re not counting Iraqi deaths.

This is a chop-and-rearrange piece — some areas, therefore, have as many as six layers of fabric. I’m not sure this is technically a quilt, because there isn’t batting behind every single square of this piece, which is mounted on felt.

Valentine-to-Iraq-Heart

The X-stitch-kisses at times resemble sutures.

Valentine-heart-rose

Crucifixes found their way into the piece, representing the enormous sacrifice both the soldier and his mother make (and his father and other family members/or her — forgive me, as a mother of two boys, this piece references our genders).

Valentine-to-Iraq-kisses-al

Here, half a heart is depicted, meaning what it is — a broken heart.

Valentine-all-mothers

The original statements, which I fractured and reassembled, were: “All mothers of sons want them to live,” and “I now have sons and I want them to live,” and “I want all wars to end.”

Valentine-x-and-n