Grief Therapy

It's been an emotional & painful week for our department. One of our nurses, Carolyn Warner was killed when she rolled her truck on her way to visit family in California. She was 47 years old. We were shocked & saddened when we got the news on Monday. It colored our whole week at work. Tears flowed frequently. We decided to make a memory book, & everyone who wants to make a page for it can, then we're going to send it to Carolyn's parents & twin sister, to let them know how much we cared about her.

I volunteered to quilt a cover for the notebook that we're using. I started out by writing things that reminded me of Carolyn, using a bleach pen on dark fabric. It isn't beautiful, but it won't even be seen unless someone takes the cover off of the book, because I placed this on the back side of the quilt. I did it more for my own grief-work, than anything else.

Here's the cover after I put it together & quilted it. Aside from the green & black batik print, the other fabrics are my hand painted cottons & silks. The blues are layers of cotton covered by silk organza, the light green is my own Shibori hand-dyed work.
I quilted a floral motif into part of the blue, because Carolyn was a terrific gardener. She was always bringing in her flowers & fresh veggies to share with all of us.
On another section I "wrote" more words about her. Things like "funny, compassionate, skilled nurse, sarcastic wit, she always made me laugh...etc".
Here's the final cover front

and back.

It really helped me to do this, to work through some of my grief.

I visited auntie Ethel on Thursday this week. Her leg is no longer healing, in fact it's getting worse. The weak pulse she had in her foot is completely gone. The foot is looking bad. I talked to Hospice & her surgeon, & we are going to just try & keep her comfortable. She'll be 94 next Thursday. I'm as sure as I can be that this will be her last birthday.

You all should go see what my friend Kathy has been doing. It's really interesting.