A Quilt Full of Memories, Restaurant Hops and Moving On

The weather on Thursday was cooperative for a day trip to a tourist town on Lake Michigan. It was sunny, warm and the clean smell of the Great Lake was in the air. Grand Haven is known for its summer Coast Guard Festival but I was there for a restaurant hop organized by my local senior hall. (There were four busloads of us who went, spread out over several days.) If you ever get a chance to go on one, try it. We started out with soup or salad at a place with a great ambiance, then we shopped our way down to a gorgeous turn-of-the-century bank-turned-restaurant where the main course was served followed by an hour where we could do more shopping or check out the nearby marina and lighthouse. I did the latter. After that, we met for dessert and drinks at a third place. The best part of a restaurant hop is we pre-order and pre-pay for our choices so we have don’t waste time looking at menus, waiting for our food to be prepared or standing in line to pay. I had a shaved fennel and apple salad, a Stony Creek salmon dinner and tiramisu for dessert. All gourmet. All yummy! 

This week I also went to see a woman who does long-arm quilting for those of us who have made the tops of quilts, basted the batting and back panel in place and then left the project hanging in a closet for too long. That’s what I did with the queen-size quilt pictured below. I call it my “sanity quilt” because cutting and hand-sewing all those quilt pieces together literally saved my sanity in the first year following my husband’s stroke. We were stuck in a one bedroom, wheelchair accessible apartment while our two houses were up for sell and I was taking him back and forth to therapies four days a week. The lady will have the long-arm machine work done by the middle of July, she promised. I can’t wait. I’m thinking of redecorating my bedroom to match the quilt. She said when it’s finished I “must” take it to a quilt shop to show her friend who owns the place. She supposedly will “appreciate the artistry and craftsmanship.” 

I’ve only made two handmade quilts in my life and taking my “sanity quilt” in to be finished off rekindled the bug to try another one. Like I need another project, says the woman who still has some unfinished designer-type teddy bears sitting in a box from my pre-caregiver days. Heck, let’s be honest here. The entire contents of my old sewing room from my old house has never been unpacked. Still, when the big summer fabric sale starts I’m going to check it out. I really do wish I could get my creative flare for working with fabrics back. It got lost when I finished that "sanity" quilt top and I got busy settling us into our new “normal” life that lasted for twelve years. Defining moment. When Don acquired a major disability it sure changed the trajectory of our lives. It changed him. It changed me. I’ve written about defining moments in this blog before. Once I wrote: “Sometimes we need the distance of time to recognize our defining moments.” And another time I wrote, “It's not always what we do in life that gives us our defining moments, sometimes it's what we don't do---the roads not traveled.” I'm thinking that getting the quilt finished will put a period on that caregiver part of my life?

With the exception of these past three years as a widow, I have not traveled life alone in a very long time. Now, there is nothing holding me back from doing whatever I want. “If only it was that easy,” a choir of widows is singing in my ear. I read in a grief recovery book that for every year a couple was together it takes one month to recover after one of them dies. For me that translates to three and a half years. Drum roll please. I’m three years and nearly four and a half months into that professionally predicted grieving and healing period. Can you believe it, I still have forty-eight days to go before anyone has the right to say, “It’s been long enough. Move on woman!” Of course, no one is going to say that to me. They see me going here and there. They think I have moved on, and on the surface they have good reason to believe that to be true. 

Forty-eight days, or not, who knows if ticking off that time will actually matter. All I know for sure is when the dusty light of dawn creeps into the my bedroom and I'm just waking up I feel empty inside---even on days when I’m going on a day trip. That feeling doesn't recede until I'm in the kitchen drinking coffee and the dog is barking at something moving in the yard. Still, that’s progress. I remember when those empty and alone feelings used to last all day long and into the night. ©

You can right click on the photos to enlarge them, if you want to see the details on my quilt.