Grandpa's Quilt

I didn’t know when I made it that it would be for him. But afterward, somehow, it seemed as if, if I were to give it away, it could go to no one else. Plain and square, with simple, strong fall colors: red, yellow, green, brown, and blue, flannel, it fit him.

My grandfather may not have needed that quilt, there were other blankets, but maybe I needed to give it to him. In a way, he was helping me more than I was helping him.


My mother isn’t a dramatic person. When she learned that her father had contracted and would probably die from pancreatic cancer, she didn’t proclaim to all the world that she grieved, or for what reason. She didn’t even tell us, my father, Elynor, and me, or, at least, not Elynor and me, until much later. Her grief she held inside, outwardly appearing just slightly sad and solemn, or tired maybe, which we neglected to notice and inquire after, thinking it just fatigue or bad temper. The debilitating headaches she has borne since childhood added to her distress, or were, perhaps, the result of it.

Later, after, she told us the story of his passing, his five children and his wife gather around, and how they sat, silently crying, until one remarked on how quietly they cried. Only then did they give voice to their grief. Grief has always been quiet in that house.

I remember taking my harp to play for him in those last days, and how he squeezed my hand weakly when I sat by him later, the quilt across his knees, unable as he was to speak anymore. Even then, those in the room with him just smiled painfully, the wrinkles at the corners of their eyes in sad mockery of past smiles. That was the last time I saw him.

I gave him the quilt, though, much earlier. He was still in his wheelchair, then, thinner, but still mobile. My grief seemed unreal, numb, frozen, much as the pain an athlete suffers ceases to exist after a certain point. I felt so helpless, so anchorless, my father busy at work and my mother grieving in her hidden way, and me, unable to make a difference in anyone’s grief, even mine. So I gave him the quilt.

It was my first quilt, the fair project of two years previously, and you could see it in the crooked seems and mismatched corners. But it was for him. He always sat with a blanket over his knees in his wheelchair; and one day I walked into my room and saw that quilt lying there, just lying there on my beanbag, which I rarely use, and I just knew.

And so I gave it to him, the one other gift I could give him besides my music, the work of my hands. Another way I could show him I loved him, before the end. We had never talked much. This quilt was what I could not put into words.


It’s been over a year since he died. My grandmother still has the quilt I gave him; I see it, on the couch, lying across the chair, whenever I visit with my mother. For both of them, sadness still lingers, as it always will, buried deep, quiet and hidden except in rare moments of silence.

I like to think he loved that quilt, that it and all the love around him made him stronger, that it helped him appreciate who and what we are, our family. And it has helped me; it has helped me through his death. I like to think that somewhere, he smiles.