Tears for Jean

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

I lost my only sister several years ago.  The hole is your heart just doesn’t go away.  She went through several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation over 5 years.  Some of those times I went to sit with her during those treatments.  Being a quilter, I had to have something for my fingers to do during those periods of time.  I cut out a lot of blocks and sat and did hand piecing waiting for that drip to be complete.  Over the years of her treatment, that is the only time I worked on them.  Since she has passed away, the project has been buried deep in the quilting room.  I’ve brought it out a few time and just couldn’t bring myself to finish what I had started.  Last month, I finally pulled it out and put it together.

I couldn’t bring myself to put any more of the blocks together.  Then it struck me that making the pieces fall away from the central design was the process that I watched with my sister.  I watched the pieces of her fall away gradually during the years of her treatment. To me this piece represents the process that I watched play out in front of me.

It is hand pieced and hand quilted.  42″x approximately 5?”

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper