Journal: The Loss of A Friend

Last Monday when I was looking through some old journals, I found yet another little story about Aaron, when he was just a toddler:

Hannah was taking a somewhat-newly-trained Aaron into the restroom…and he, as he trotted along behind her, told each of us goodbye:  “Goodbye, Hestuh.”  “Goodbye, Gwandma Dzjackson.”  “Goodbye, Cawub.”  (That’s the New and Improved version of ‘Caybood’.)  “Goodbye, Yiddia.”  “Goodbye, Toria.”  And then he stopped in our bedroom doorway, where Larry and Bobby were scooting our bed back against the newly painted wall, and told them, “Goodbye, Doddy.”  “Goodbye, Gwandpa Dzjackson.” 

Bobby remarked, “It’s a frightening excursion; one never knows if one will ever make it back again.”  hee hee

At 3:50 p.m. that afternoon, I wrote the following story to some quilting friends, one of whom had just admonished another to merely say ‘thank you’ when someone complimented her on her quilt, rather than to start pointing out all the flaws in said quilt:

We have a very good friend who, ever since we can remember, if you say, “Oh, what a pretty dress you have on!” is bound to make a face, tug at it, and say, “This old rag?!”

In high school one day, I said, “No, no, Marlene!  That’s the wrong answer.  What you say is, ‘Why, thank you.’”

So she, all in faky falsetto, tugged out her skirt, made the same face, and said, “Why, thank you.”

After a dozen of those answers, we all told her to go back to saying, “This old rag?!” 

At a quarter after 8 that very evening, we got a text from Victoria, who had gotten it from one of her cousins, asking us to pray for Marlene.  Her husband Dennis had found her unconscious at home.  She still wasn’t conscious when they took her by ambulance to the hospital.

Half an hour later, we learned that she had had an aneurysm to the base of the brain.  They’d put in a breathing tube, but there was nothing the doctors could do.  

They left her on life support until their children and her brothers and sisters got there, and then they removed the breathing tube.  And then she was gone.

Quite a shock, and such a sad thing.  Marlene was three years older than me – 61.  She and Dennis have four children and 20 grandchildren.  She was one of our children’s favorite teachers., and one of my best friends.  She’s been the math teacher for our high school for 27 years.  Hannah had remarked to me a couple of days ago that she didn’t think Marlene had missed a day of teaching since our school began.

I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking of her and her family... remembering the over-half-a-century good memories I have of her.  So hard to get it through my head that she is gone.  Here she is with one of her little granddaughters, in 2008.

Tuesday afternoon I filled our bird feeders, and soon there were over two dozen goldfinches on them.  There have been some little birds almost the exact same size as the goldfinches out there, and their wing markings are like the finches... their beaks the same... but their breasts are streaked, unlike the finches’ buffy white ones.  I looked it up... and discovered they are pine siskins.  I’ve probably seen them many times, and not realized they were different from the goldfinches.  The siskins are also in the finch family.

That day, Hannah had surgery again on the nasal polyps in her sinus passageways.  She did much better this time when coming out of anesthesia.  Because of her troubles last time, the doctors had kept her in the hospital overnight; but this time she was home by afternoon.  They put a motion-sickness patch on her, and that seemed to help.

She still feels pretty rough, and she has a cold, too, unfortunately; but in just a day or two she could smell things again.  She has stents in the sinus passages.  A couple of them, I think, will dissolve.

It was 10° that evening, with a wind chill of 3°.  An areal flood warning for our county and a couple of surrounding counties had been issued, because there was a big ice jam at the confluence of the Platte and Loup Rivers.  It was some distance from us, and in any case, we live on a hill; so the only flooding we get is what comes down through the ceiling now and then.  🙄

Larry cut up some more of his venison.  Tiger gets excited when he detects the aroma of meat, especially venison.  He loiters at Larry’s feet, periodically rubbing on his ankles, stares up into his face, and says in his low-pitched, raspy voice, “Mrrrrow.”  And again, “Mrrrow.”  When nothing happens quickly enough to suit him, he redoubles his efforts: “MRRRROWWWW!!!”  This makes Larry laugh – and dole out a few tidbits.

When Tiger first came to us, he would never, ever take anything from our hands.  In fact, he didn’t understand about table scraps, at all.  But he would eventually smell what we had to offer... back up and wait until we dropped it for him... and then he might – or he might not – eat it.

But in the last couple of months, he has finally decided to try taking a piece of food right from our hands.  He generally drops it – but such is his appetite for venison, that he actually took a piece from Larry’s fingers, held onto it, and ate it.  That was the first time he’d ever done that.

After supper, I finished the last pieced border for the New York Beauty quilt.  Then I turned off lights and machine and headed for my recliner with a hot cup of coffee, intending to relax with my laptop for a while.

Teensy threw up.

That’s not relaxing.  😜

I put him outside before he did it again, and cleaned up the mess.

Before long, he came back in (it’s cold out there), looking forlorn.  I inquired into his general health and welfare, and he informed me he was fine – just before he started gagging his socks off again. 

“Go outside!” I yelped, and he ran for the pet door. 

Not quite in time.

I cleaned things up again. 

Teensy reentered the house.  Poor little thing looked at me with sad, big eyes.  I offered condolences and petting.  He went and curled up in his Thermabed, and was all right thereafter.  He’d possibly lost the thyroid medication I’d given him a couple of hours earlier; but I didn’t give him more, for fear of overdosing him.  He’s been doing so well since we found out about his hyperthyroidism and started giving him medicine for it!  I hope that was a onetime thing.  Maybe he’d devoured a mouse that didn’t agree with him?

He’s seemed fine ever since.

Wednesday, I put the second border on the New York Beauty quilt, that is, the pieced one with the 212 odd-sized triangles.  Instead of the quilt being 122” x 122”, it’s going to be 117” x 117”.  I had to make the inner border a little narrower, 3” instead of 4”, and the others, too, in order to keep the general ratio, because I didn’t have quite enough of the fabric I needed for a 4” border. 

After the pieced border, there is a narrower mitered border.  I attached it... went to iron the seams... got one side pressed... tried to turn it to continue the next side – but the thing weighed a ton.  I tried to move the heap of fabric at my foot – and a warm body inside the mass of fabric wriggled and said indignantly, “PrrdrddrrrrMRRRooowwWW!”

“Hey!  Get out of my quilt!” I cried, with every bit as much indignation.

So Teensy scrambled out, stared at me reproachfully, and went and sat in the doorway with his back to me.

Next, I cut the backing to the right size.  It took three 129” lengths of 42”-wide fabric.  That's 10 ¾ yards of backing.  I would sew the lengths together the next day.

After spending 7 hours on it that day, I had 191.5 hours in the quilt.  106.5 hours of that was in the piecing.  The next most time-consuming part?  Removing the paper from the blocks:  21 hours.  Those hours were spent at the kitchen table near Larry while he recuperated from his dental surgery.

Wednesday evening, there was visitation for Marlene at our church.  We decided to wait until the visitation the next day, since Larry got home late from work, and I still had a cold.  It was just as well we did, too.  Those who went told us that there were so many people there, the line queued all the way through the sanctuary and out into the hall and on into vestibule, and it moved so slowly that people were there until 10:00 p.m., instead of the usual 8:00 p.m.

Larry smoked some venison to perfection in our Traeger grill that night, and was able to eat it without grinding it first.  He was so happy, he ate two pieces, instead of his usual one piece.  The dentures could already use a realignment, and he’s supposed to wait another three weeks for that.  But all in all, he’s doing very well.

Thursday, we got to the church a little before 1:30 p.m., and didn’t leave until about 6:00.  After the visitation, we had a service that started with many of the beautiful old songs we love so well.  A quartet of Marlene’s students who recently graduated sang I Will Pilot Thee.  A young man, accompanied by the piano and organ, played Nearer My God to Thee on his trombone, and our men’s choir sang Inside Those Pearly Gates.  In the choir are many of Marlene’s relatives – brother, son, nephews (one of whom is Bobby, our son-in-law, who wrote the arrangement for the song), great-nephews (Kurt, another of our sons-in-law, and Aaron, our oldest grandson).

After the service, we usually have a graveside ceremony.  But since the high temperature that day was about 5°, with a wind chill of -15°, we had the short ceremony in the large front vestibule.  Many of Marlene’s students stood on the twin staircases at the sides of the foyer.

Marlene’s favorite color was red, and her favorite flower was roses.  We’ve never before had so many big, beautiful bouquets made of red roses – or roses of any color; maybe not even that many flowers, for that matter – in our church for any other funeral.  A good many of those roses came from former and present students.

The hardier members of the family, along with some friends, accompanied the hearse to the cemetery.  The rest of us went to the Fellowship Hall and awaited their return, whereupon we had a luncheon of a variety of sandwiches, pickles, olives, cucumbers, carrots, cups of jello, milk (chocolate or white), coffee, tea, and an assortment of fancy cupcakes made by some of the gourmet bakers among us.

We visited... walked back into the sanctuary and read cards on the bouquets... and finally left at about 6:00 p.m.  If you’d like to see the service, it is here.

Larry and I then went to Hobby Lobby for the batting for the New York Beauty quilt, then to Bomgaars for bird seed and some birthday gifts for Emma and Grant, whose birthdays were the next day.  We got a jacket for Joanna, since the blouse we gave her for Christmas didn’t fit.  We took the jacket to Joanna before we went home.

We got Emma a jacket, too, added the lace blouse that hadn’t fit Joanna, and a necklace, too.  For Grant, we got a hat, gloves, and a small Allis Chalmers tractor, Model C, to match his daddy Teddy’s tractor.  Emma would be 13, and Grant would be 6. 

When we got home I sewed the quilt backing together and loaded it on my frame.  And that was all the oomph I could muster, that day.

Friday, I got the rest of the New York Beauty quilt loaded on the 12’ frame, and the top narrow border quilted.  Teensy and Tiger were a lot of help.  😏😬

While I loaded the backing, I put the huge pile of batting – 120” x 120” – over in the corner.  Tiger found it, and happily waded in.  He turned around two or three times, then laid down and snuggled right in.

“Ahhhh... feels sooo good...  Could you quit bothering me, please?”

He finally just buried his face in the stuff and went sound asleep.

In the meanwhile, Teensy came in, saw that Tiger had already snagged the prize spot in the middle of the batting; so, in a little fit of pique, he leaped up onto the cutting table and went to sit behind my computer speakers.  He got his foot caught in the thread and totally unthreaded my sewing machine in the process.

Here are some of my best souvenirs from our vacation to Creede, Colorado:  strong, rubber-tipped Bessey clamps for my quilting frame.  The ones that came on it had plastic tips, and they not only didn’t hold fabric or that red cord on the side clamps very well, the tips were also crumbling away.  I found these in the Creede True Value General Store while Larry was hunting down fittings for a water line on the camper.  They are actually wood-working clamps.  The store had several sizes; these were the smallest, I think.  Some of them were big enough to clamp your house to a cottonwood tree in high winds.

I nevah, evah exaggerate.  Nevah, evah.

The backing is 129” x 129”.  That leaves only 7 ½” free at each end of my 12-foot frame.

I no sooner got the batting loaded on the frame than Teensy snuggled up in the part that hangs underneath the frame.  See more pictures here:  Quilting Begun on NYB

And... the quilting begins!

Soon I requested that Teensy kindly remove himself from the batting, as he was in my way; so he migrated to the rag rug.

Tiger immediately spotted the vacancy in the batting, and promptly moved in.

Someone asked, “How in the world did you get the scallops to precisely match the tips of the triangles??!?!?”

Well, I used one o’ them thar handy-dandy thangs called a ‘ruler’.  And then I added and subtracted and divided and multiplied.  😉

Another friend said, “I don’t know how you accomplish so much with those two helpers you have!”

“I’ve learned to be a good cat stepper-over/hurdler/steeplechaser,” I answered.

After our recent excitement with a too-hot chimney, a friend asked if we had a carbon monoxide detector.  I told her, “I suppose we should probably get one, one of these days.  But we have so many places where the wind blows merrily through, I can’t imagine we’re at any risk from carbon monoxide!  We had one in the big 5^th-wheel camper that we had several years ago.  It made periodic and continuous friendly, quiet chirps, letting us know that the thing was on, doing its duty, day and night, and all was well – until I beat it to death with a crowbar.”

Then, “Well, I may have just removed the batteries; but I definitely had the crowbar inclination in my heart.”

I still need to make a cover for my Avanté longarm.  I realized just how much I needed to, when I got ready to use it Friday, and had to dust it all off first.

My Saturday was quilting, washing dishes, quilting, cooking, and quilting. 

All the cream-on-white triangles are quilted on the top border.

Oh, and I carried the cats’ Thermabeds upstairs and put them in my quilting studio.  Then I ordered Tiger out of the batting under the frame – so he went and got in... Teensy’s bed.

Cats.

One quilting friend noticed that the white triangles look like tall hearts, what with the scallops over the tops of them.

Those ‘tall hearts’ won’t stay that way for long.  They’ll be a thing of the past just as soon as I finish the large blocks in the corners, rethread my machine with white, and decide on a quilting design for the white triangles.  😊  Funny, I never once thought of the effect the scallops were going to have on the triangles beneath them, i.e., making ‘hearts’ out of them.

I like feathers.  I like straight-line rulerwork... I like pebbles with swirls and curls... I like tight fill-quilting balanced with large quilting designs, to make those large designs really stand out.

The backs of the envelopes that came in the mail recently have quilting designs scribbled all over them now, while I debate the next quilting design.  😅

One time I was custom quilting for a customer... put three large swirls in numerous strategic spots on the quilt... filled in with pebbles and feathering...

And realized I had made a row of astonished gargoyles all across the top of the quilt.

I didn’t breathe a word, and she never said, “Hey, I love those adorable gargoyles you made all over my quilt!”, so... maybe... maybe... she never gave it a thought, and never saw what my eyes saw.  😵

Or she loves adorable gargoyles.

I’m always a bit slow when I start on a custom work, deciding what designs to quilt where.  I sketch... I measure... I sketch some more... I look at Pinterest and Google Images... I look at Facebook quilting group pictures... I sketch...

But when I finish this top border, that design will be set in stone, and I’ll just have to repeat it on the other borders.  And when I get the first block done, that design will be determined, and I’ll only have to repeat it 39 more times, in all the other blocks.  So my pace will definitely pick up speed.

I hope.  😉

And now, wouldn’t you know, yesterday after church Kurt’s older brother gave us an invitation to his wedding... which will be on March 17^th!!!  I want to make them something.  But there’s that big quilt on the frame...

Maybe I’ll make another casserole dish cover.  I do still have some vegetable/kitchen prints.  I wouldn’t need my quilting frame for this.  Here’s one I made five years ago:

Deciding that was definitely what I would do, I ordered a copper-coated Dutch oven from Amazon for.  I’ll make a casserole cozy and potholder set to go with it. 

This afternoon I filled the bird feeders – and a red-breasted nuthatch came and landed on the suet feeder right while I was standing there!  Such a pretty little thing. 

It was sleeting a bit, and the deck was slippery.  The trees were white with frost.

I’m typing my letter upstairs in my quilting studio today, instead of at the kitchen table where I usually do it.  It’s warmer here than it is in the kitchen, and I don’t have to have the thermostat nearly so high.  I’m saving electricity!

I brought the cats’ beds upstairs again, too.  Sometimes when I do that, they ignore them.  But this time, I turned the furnace down... turned up the EdenPURE heater in my quilting studio... and whataya know?  The cats like their Thermabeds in the studio just fine.

I trotted out into the addition and took some pictures of the work Larry did Saturday evening.  He put up the wall on the left; it’s quarter-round logs.

Larry just got home from work – and it’s 10:30 p.m.  He’s been working on a scissor lift at the shop, trying to get it to run properly.  I’ll betcha he’s half starved half to death!

So off I go to get him some supper.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,