So I'm up in the wee hours stressing out about the upcoming quilt guild meeting this week.
This month, rather than a speaker, they're asking people to bring their favorite quilt and tell the story of it. Well. There is no question of which that is. It's a Carpenter's Star quilt that I made in a class at a Fort Worth quilt store, one where they had you just pick a certain number of fat quarters for the different star colors. When I was working on it, my youngest child decided she loved it and it was going to be HER quilt. Okay, sweetie, it's yours. I had it long-arm-quilted with a pattern of hearts, and it went on her bed.
She was later murdered by a really awful scary teenager we didn't know who lived in our neighborhood. He's in prison now. For her funeral, that quilt was used as the pall for her coffin. After the funeral we took it home. I kept it folded away for some time, and then later, when the pain was less sharp, it became a throw quilt for our couch. It's the first thing we reach for when someone is cold. We are reminded of her when we use it.
It's been over 10 years. You never really get over the grief in some ways. The weight of it lives in your heart. But time wears away at the sharp corners that rip you up at the beginning. You don't move on from her, I did not like that being said, but you do eventually move on *with* the grief. I see her pictures every day. I know how old she should be, and miss getting to find out what she'd be like at this age. We remember her and talk about her.
I'm afraid that if I take that quilt and tell this story, people will get freaked out by it, find it too morbid, or just generally not know how to deal with it. We moved a year and a half ago, nobody I meet here already knows about it. But if I take some other quilt and call it my favorite, I would feel like I was betraying her memory. I have a couple of family quilts that my mom just passed on to me, I could take one of those, although the one of those that has a story is also a tragedy.
I don't want to skip the meeting. I missed the last 3 because of stuff with my parents' house hunt and move, and because I'm new enough and don't know people enough to feel comfortable going to the holiday party in December. My birthday is this month, and traditionally when it's your birthday month you bring things to go into a raffle basket, I do not want to miss out on doing that, and I have my contribution ready.
So I'm not sure what to do and it's making me worry and brood in the wee hours
