A Birthday Quilt, Well Used

Fabric companies should put a message on the selvages: "Warning: Quilting Makes Life More Poignant." Poignant in a good way, enriching celebrations of birthdays, weddings, holidays, of course; but sometimes poignant in a fall-to-your-knees, rend-your-garments, rage-at-the-Creator sort of way.

Warning: This posting involves both kinds of poignant.

This past Friday night, we lost our very dear friend Jeff - (he's the one on the left, with my husband Alan on the right) - after a one-year ordeal with cancer. He was 52.

Photo is circa 2005. You can't see it clearly in the picture, but my husband is wearing a yellow felt crown and Jeff, on the left, has a fluffy pink feathered hair accessory on the back of his head. They were temporarily wearing them while their costumed daughters were in a jump house during a synagogue Purim party.

When you look in the dictionary under menche  - Yiddish for 'fine human being' - there's a picture of Jeff. He was a devoted husband - no, devoted doesn't even begin to cover his love and respect for his wife Alison. He was a Ph.D rocket science who loved his work. He was a hyper-indulgent father - "The children have chosen to eat at McDonalds today!" he would happily announce when we picked our kids up from preschool in the late 90's, where we met. We visited McDonalds a lot in those days, but don't worry, the kids ate very little - it wasn't the McFood they were after - it was the play structure and the ball pit, and Jeff always sided with the kids' desire for fun.

Contradicting to his willingness to visit McD's, he was an enthusiastic gourmet chef. His annual Chanukah latke (potato pancake) parties were anticipated all year. Jeff would spend the entire party stationed at the stove, patiently doling out perfectly-cooked sizzling latkes to the hungry hordes - some traditional style pancakes, some with hitherto unheard-of ingredients like sweet potatoes and zucchini (well before the sweet potato/zucchini latke fads). He also made a delicious and varied assortment of briskets. And once he made a beet-mozzarella-spinach salad that I recall as one of the best things I ever ate in my entire life, and how many non-chocolate substances, let alone a salad, gets that kind of a compliment (from me)?

I could go on about Jeff, so I will, just a little more. Kind, selfless, calmmmmmm.  One autumn morning in 1998, he met us at the hospital at 3 a.m., when I found myself, rather suddenly, giving birth, with my four-year-old still in tow (my lightening-fast labor didn't give us time to drop him off at their house). Jeff caught up with us in the hospital corridor, as we were sprinting towards delivery (every so often I stopped to writhe on the floor with a monster contraction, so Jeff was able to catch up); he gracefully extricated our confused preschooler, reassured him, and took him home to sleep and await meeting his new sister. I wouldn't be surprised if they had breakfast at McDonalds. (They didn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did).

Jeff also had a miraculous head of thick black hair that remained ungreyed and undiminished, not only through early middle age, but even through the chemo.

If there were a list of people who deserve a particularly horrible form of cancer, he would not be anywhere on it.

Friday afternoon. Alison sent out an email saying that Jeff was unresponsive, and could go at any time. So my husband and I went over there that night. he was unconscious and his breathing was uneven.

To my astonishment, he lay under the quilt I made him for his 40th birthday, 12 years ago. I hadn't seen it in a long time, but  I was glad it was there.

(It was basically a quickie novelty fabric birthday quilt, with giant squares, rectangles and strips of fabrics reflecting his and his kids' many interests - dogs, cooking, Pokemon, etc. And especially games. If something involved a dice and points, Jeff was all over it. In the center of the quilt, I put a Monopoly fabric panel. I had inserted a picture of Jeff, holding his daughter in a front pouch, with his son peeking over his shoulder. I faked the font to rewrite the word as 'Jeffopoly', quilting his age into the yellow 'community chest' rectangle, and the year, 2001, into the 'chance' square.)

(I also set in a cheater checkerboard panel with "checkers" made from his kids' faces.

There was a fabric envelope stitched into the quilt to hold the pieces. I also made pieces with Jeff's and Alison's faces, to serve as kings and queens.)

Back to Friday night. I took Jeff's hand and I thanked him for being such a dear and wonderful friend, for being in our lives. He made some little sounds, but otherwise, as we'd expected, nothing. We drove home and I went to bed around 11, praying furiously.

Saturday morning Alison called to tell us that he died, peacefully, during the night.

Under my quilt.

When we went over there later that day, Alison showed me that the quilt has a couple of tears in it, and she gave it to me to fix.  She told me that it had been "well used," before and during Jeff's illness.

That made me happy, in a miserable sort of way.

So it's in my house again right now, far softer and more faded than when it departed a dozen years ago.

There are so many things wrong with the world that I cannot repair. Fixing this quilt is the least I can do. It's pretty much all I can do.

Contributions in Jeff's honor can be made to the Sequoyah School, where Jeff served a term on the  board of directors. The donations can be made to through the school's website, www.sequoyahschool.org, or by personal check (note in the memo line that it's in honor of Jeff Stern), sent to: Sequoyah School, 535 South Pasadena Ave., Pasadena CA 91105