Quilt is Life is Story

Last night I dreamt about quilts.

This isn't a real shock to anyone, I am certain. However, the trappings of the dream around the quilt made it more important - important enough that I remembered it when I woke.

I was in a... well, for convenience let us call it a cave or tent that was covered on the inside with animal skins. I was sitting on furs and working on a quilt. The quilt I was working on was only one of a stack, and the rest were unfinished - no bindings, rough edges like I'd stopped working on them in the middle. I was bound and determined to finish the one I was working on.

Someone asked me why I was working so hard. I replied that I had failed on the others, but this one I was determined to get done. They asked why the others were failures. My answer was "I don't belong there anymore." It was a bit gloomy, but resigned.

Another voice asked "Why not? Were they not part of your life?"

"Sure. But they don't want me anymore."

"But they were part of your life."

"Yes."

I looked down at the quilt I was working on and realized that as soon as I finished the quilt I would be dead - I was making the quilt of my life. The other quilts were parts of my life that were no longer current - things and people that had fallen away or left, or I left behind. I realized what the voice was telling me. My quilt of life isn't done. More, the old quilt pieces are part of the quilt I am working on now. They are all part of my life, whether I like them or not.

"But how do I join them?" I asked. "How do I quilt them together?"

And people filed into the cave/tent. All of them with fabric and needles and thread. All of the people I have known, past and present, and probably some that I haven't met, or those that I had an impact on without knowing it. They settled around me and started to work, pulling out the old quilts and starting to piece them onto the section I was working on. They joked and exchanged stories about me and each other, pointing out pieces of fabric that represented them.

It felt lighter and brighter in the cave/tent. I felt lighter and brighter. The colors of the quilt I was currently working on changed from browns to bright colors. There were darker patches and browns still, to be sure, but the whole was brighter. I could see where the sections joined, they were now adorned with embroidery and even conductive thread and LED lights so areas lit up. I forgot about binding off the section I'd thought complete and started to share in the quilting bee of my life.

*digression* In college, I had a professor who interpreted dreams. I asked him if he could help me interpret a dream (as in, do it for me). He shook his head and said "I can only interpret my dreams. You must interpret yours."

*back to the point* I think this is a fairly obvious dream. :) I get so caught up in the minutiae of life, like all of us do, that I forget all the other parts of my life. Not all of them were fabulous, no. But they make me who I am. They changed who I was into who I am. Regardless of whether I see some of the people from my past again or not, they encouraged or helped me along my way. Some of them may not have even meant to, but they did. They moved with me down my path, added pieces to my quilt of life.

I have been thinking about this all morning. I would like to make a quilt of my life. It wouldn't be a picture... not really. There would be patterns, and maybe the eye could pick out a picture from far enough away, like those photo montages of Abraham Lincoln. What would my quilt contain? What fabrics would I choose for people? Can you boil a life down into a quilt?

I think I will start. I know what I want to do. It won't be a fast quilt - nor should it be. It will be a work in progress. A work that lingers, to be bound by someone else who can bind around the rough spots and the curves of a rounded edge, to be laid over me in the coffin, to be used to shroud me as I am lowered into the ground or taken with me into the urn.

And while that last bit seems morbid, it isn't really. No one gets out alive. I am just working on my shroud well before-hand. And whoever has to wind me in my shroud will see all the people who had an impact on my life, all the people and memories that will go with me into the ground and into the unknown. When I go, I am not going alone.

S