Mom

(Blogging is a learning experience. I just learned that when you "preview" your finished blog and then hit the "back" button, it all disappears. This is the blog as I remember it...)

I'm creating a fabric Christmas ornament that is going to be pretty great when it's done. And I'm hoping to use the same technique when I make an urn for my mother's ashes.

It is hard for me to think that I've lived nearly 18 years without a mother. Beyond March 17, 2006, I will have been without a mom for longer than I had one.

I love to tell my kids about their "Grandma Phyllis." I hope they imagine her to be funny and caring, generous and smiling. I tell them how she would have made them cozy pajamas, attended all their school programs, thoughtfully typed letters to them (she had horrible handwriting) and baked Lemon Delight Bars. She did all those things for me. She also told me every day that she loved me.

When she died, I didn't know what to do with her ashes. They've lived in various closets all this time, encased in a brown plastic box with a paper label. It's about the size of a shoebox and fairly heavy. Eighteen years ago I thought I'd go somewhere warm and exotic to spread her ashes, but I never did. In all those years, the closest I came to tropical was the beach near her ex-mother-in-law's house--not exactly the best final resting place. Recently one of her friends suggested that she should go back to Iowa where her parents are buried. There's a stone there with her name on it, so that might still work.

But in the meantime, I'm going to make an urn. I'm trying to move my sewing away from clothes and costumes and into the realm of fiber art vessels. I'm going to build the urn like a cross between quilting and paper mache'. Strips of fabric layered and sewn. Photos and her obituary phototransfered onto fabric and embellished with crewl work (her hobby) and odd pieces of her old jewelry. I may or may not put her ashes in it. I hope the act of creating will honor her and perhaps release me from the crushing sadness that still hits me so unexpectedly.