You Are A Unique Square in Someone’s Quilt

Thursday Thoughts, Inspiration, Friendship for Women Entrepreneurs, Females

Can you envision a unique quilt knowing that a quilt is a bed cover made by sewing layers of cloth together, usually with different colors or patterns to make a design? My favorite quilt, until this past weekend, was a soft red patterned one my maternal grandmother used to let me sleep under when we visited her for long weekends. It had a distinctive smell, touch, and was always kept in a special closet where I could find it. Upon her passing, I took the quilt to remind me of her and my memories.

This past Sunday a group of friends gathered to reminisce about a dear friend. Some of us knew each other and others didn’t but we were all drawn to the unique, positive personality, a dynamo of sorts, in our friend Teresa. In an earlier post I wrote about the experience, but what kept arising in my mind and eyesight, was a quilt pattern one of the women brought to share with us as she creates a special quilt in Teresa’s memory.

We could choose any pattern that spoke to us. I took a piece that had a rose in it since I used to share roses with Teresa from events and bought her two dozen pink ones for her 60^th birthday party. Also, upon Teresa’s passing my son and his fiancée bought me a rose bush to put outside my kitchen door to remind me of Teresa. It was given to me in August and it bloomed until late November, a miracle in our Syracuse climate. So the rose pattern had to be the one I kept.

Looking at the photo at the top, taken of the women who attended this gathering, you see we are all wearing different colors; some of us stand taller than others, with different colored eyes and hair too. The picture symbolizes a living quilt of Teresa’s friendships and how we were “sewn together” at this special gathering to remember her. Each of us slices of Teresa’s memories, kinships, and experiences gathered together in one place.

There are so many other people who could be added to this personal quilt for Teresa – more friends, family members, student leaders she taught, neighbors, advisors, healers, doctors, and even animals and nature she loved.  If woven all together, a fuller, more colorful quilt of Teresa’s life and loves would stand the test of time and touch, much like my Grandmother’s ever-soft red quilt.

We are all unique patches in each other’s lives, adding our own unique colorful symbol to each other and in the end making the most wonderful blanket of love. Don’t forget the people who will make up your beautiful quilt one day, and how you will add to theirs.