Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

This past weekend one of my aunts passed away very suddenly, leaving my mother’s youngest sibling widowed and one of my closest cousins motherless in this life.  I grew up far away from my cousins on that side of the family and I mostly saw my aunt at family gatherings; her death, however, was and is a shock.  Aunt Jeanne was a quiet, unassuming woman who always greeted me with kindness; I knew her as a wife, a mother, a sister, an aunt, and a grandmother, and I have never in my life heard a single human being speak critically of her.  Instead, I saw Jeanne quietly doing her part in our family.  What I remember most vividly, perhaps, are her stitches.  My mother’s 3 sisters and 3 sisters-in-law have come together to make quilts for each member of my generation, and I’ve had the privilege of putting a few stitches in one or two of these quilts with my slow, unskilled fingers.  As I’ve done so, I’ve observed the quilting style of each of my aunts, and Jeanne’s stitches made a lasting impression on me–they were tiny, even, and beautifully precise, stitches that held together and did all they were meant to do.  In my (few–I have a 4-year-old) quiet moments in the past few days, those stitches keep coming back to me as a metaphor for her life.  I will not be able to attend her funeral–I have previous commitments to my parents and siblings–and that saddens me.  In lieu of my presence, all I can think to offer is this small tribute to a woman whose life was made up of small, even stitches, the sort of stitches that create, in the end, a work of well-made–and well-lived–beauty.