When Life Give You Scraps -- Make Quilts

This is a story I wrote after my dad passed away. I actually won a writing contest with it.



When Life Gives you Scraps -- Make Quilts

It was around Thanksgiving six years ago when mom and dad stopped into my husband’s office with the news. The cause of dad’s headaches and memory loss was not simply “old age” as dad had stubbornly tried to convince us, but rather a lemon-sized tumor interwoven in the blood vessels in his brain. I was stunned. My sixty-year-old father still had things to do, corny jokes to tell, broken toys to fix, future grandchildren to meet, and most importantly, advice to give to his daughter.

As the cancer conquered all, the days grew long but the weeks quickly disappeared and by March the end was close. “Dad,” I said in a quiet moment near the end, “I’ll be O.K. if you want to let go and go Home. We’ll take care of mom. I’ll do my best to make you proud of me.” His ability to speak was long gone but his face relaxed and he patted my arm. I knew he had heard me. The next morning he moved on.

Over the next year, I often found myself with the phone in my hand ready to call and ask which kind of paint to buy for the fence or when to plant the peas. Each time I would catch myself and smile. Oh how I wished for e-mail access to Heaven.

As the holidays approached again, the excitement was shadowed with a morsel of melancholy. At the family party, delicious food was eaten, gifts exchanged and songs sacredly sung and at the end, mom brought out four unexpected packages from the closet. As we pushed aside the tissue, we could see the patchwork of my father’s life transformed into the makings of a quilt. My mother had carefully taken my dad’s infamous plaid wardrobe and lovingly pieced them into an heirloom for each of us.

As my hand glided across the squares, it stopped abruptly on the fabric of his hideous bathrobe. It had chased off many late night pranksters with toilet paper in tow, met many potential suitors and lit more Christmas morning tree lights than I could possibly remember. For a moment I desperately wished that once embarrassingly loud garment would make an unexpected entrance. My four-year-old son sensing my sadness quickly commented, “Mom, whenever we need a hug from Grandpa all we need to do is wrap up in our quilt.” The gift of a father’s loving embrace – what could be better than that.