Nearly five months ago I lost my first grandchild. What follows is the making of a memorial quilt for our little Amara, stillborn on 3 July 2021. In the time of making the little wall hanging my grief has come to terms with the Mystery that is Life and Death, even in the very young, and it has brought it home with great grief. Amara means moon in Arabic, and I was so looking forward to meeting this wee new moon.
I had bought some lovely Australiana style fabrics featuring kookaburras, possums and of course koalas for the purpose of making a cot quilt and floor-throw for our little baby girl, due later in the year. Beside the possums, koalas, kookaburras were all sorts of native bush flora, grevilleas and eucalypt leaves, seed nuts and flowers, flannel flowers and banksia, tea tree and proteas. Work on it was about to begin, as I imagined pointing out the different creatures: “Where’s the possie; and can you see a kookie?”
On that Monday night there was a phone call from Leo. “Are you sitting down, Mum? Maybe get a glass of wine.” I was familiar with that type of introduction to our conversations and knew it portended some sort of news, but I was not prepared for what was to follow. After some small talk in response to his query about my state and the annoyances of living in a Covid-19 world, the words he uttered left me speechless and broke my heart. He continued by telling me they’d been to the clinic at the hospital, “…they couldn’t find a heartbeat.” With that small clinical phrase, everything fell apart, and the unrealistic hope that somehow they were wrong stayed with me until I heard my dear son whimper, as I desperately searched for words that would not come.
Talking to the oncology nurse this morning, I told her our sad news, and that making a memorial quilt was helping me accept our tragic loss. She is a quilter too. She said “Ah, that’s lovely – and it will remind them of their little girl whenever they use it.” I didn’t quite get her comment until it dawned on me that she was probably thinking of a bed quilt, not a wall hanging, which is what I am working on. It began as a simple, small cloth intended for Leo and Mel to hold little Amara in their arms after the 22 week gestation and her birth as a stillborn, and perhaps to be used as a burial cloth later. It was a mourning cloth, but has now become a wall hanging that I hope brings peace and comfort to Mel and Leo – and a memory of their first pregnancy. It’s devastating to lose a child, especially the first, in utero and for no apparent clinical reason.
The 24” square of backing cotton depicts the pale white petals and golden-centres of the Tasmanian blue gum species of eucalypt. I’m reminded that the botanical word is derived from the Greek to describe the calyx of gum flowers, safe and protected from the environment, before they burst open into full bloom. But even what has not come into full blossom brings beauty to the world – and our lives. I brought my sister into the cloth by stitching a finely crocheted necklace of flowers and leaves that she’d brought home for me from Turkey, stitched into place at the corners and mid-points of dissection in quilting the two layers: the wheel of the eight seasons of Earth’s annual cycle. The double orange flowers overhanging the edge seem to bring the flatness of the square to life, and there’s a little sparkle from the clear glass beads incorporated into the crochet.
More to come in the designing of this little memorial quilt.
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