Thoughts On An Afghan, An Embroidered Pillow, And A Blue Suit

Finally, after more than two and half years it is done. I'm not a crafts person, but I enjoy meeting up with the women in the crochet group and I also really enjoy crocheting. I loved making the squares, getting all the fun colors together, and then trimming each square with black yarn. 

But then came the hard part: Putting it all together, all those squares, black on black. It was very difficult for me to see, even after I had my eyes fixed. So I did something I don't usually do, I gave up, put it in a drawer and let it sit there for a long time. 

I didn't pick up a new project, I wanted to finish this one first. But it was hard.

Then I thought about my mom, who like me, was not into crafts either. For as long as I lived at home, there was a beautiful pillow case, a large one for a decorative pillow, embroidered with wool yarn in a chevron pattern, that my mom made. It was almost finished. It was in a drawer.

My mom would say all through my childhood, "I'll finish that pillow some day." As she aged, she would say, "I'll finish that pillow before I die, you'll see."

The pillow never got finished. 

My only brother sadly fell victim to prescription drugs and later to heroin and cocaine. He had been a very handsome young man who used to go to work wearing suits and ties, and then became this wreck of a human being. 

He would say to my mother, "Don't worry, some day soon, I'll wear that blue suit of mine again. I will clean up and you will be so proud of me." Then he died, at the age of 40, of an overdose of heroin. 

I don't know what happened to the blue suit. 

As I procrastinated with my afghan, my thoughts wandered back to that beautiful pillow, to the blue suit, then to death, no second chances, and other not productive places.

Until I picked up all the little squares and began to put them together. That must have been a year ago now, but it doesn't matter. It's done, I seized the day, I saw it through, it's far from perfect, but it's done. And I'm happy!