A new cancer quilt

When I underwent treatments for Hodgkin's Disease in 1999, my mom and I wanted to work on a quilt together. With my mom's professional quilter friend Alex's help, we ended up making a quilt of what Alex dubbed "dinosaur snot green" and purple. I took that quilt to college with me, and everywhere else I've gone except Slovakia, but even then my mom used the leftover hearts we made and put them together in a mini quilt which she sent me, and which soaked up many homesick tears that year. (The mini quilt is now in my office at church.)

Last year, on the day of my first biopsy, my mom also came to visit. She didn't know I was going to have the biopsy until she got there. She was there for a quilting seminar (with said professional quilter friend). But mom was obviously a wreck thinking that her little girl might have cancer again. That night, after my biopsy, we were both out at Lake Ontario, at my aunt and uncle's house, watching the beautiful sunset, and my photographer uncle took some fabulous shots of it. The next day I learned that the biopsy was negative. I texted my mom immediately, who called me back in tears. She told me later that her first thought was, "The sun still shines!" Later, when she looked at the shots my uncle took of that sunset the night before, she thought they would make a great quilt - and inspired by my good news from the doctor, she thought she would call it, "The sun still shines."

Of course, it wasn't too long afterward that they found something else in my breast, and I did end up having cancer. And then that got removed, but I ended up having cancer again, and so I had a mastectomy. My mom came to NY for the surgery, and to occupy herself and process all that was happening, she worked on a quilt, based on that photograph. By the time she went home, she had finished two quilt tops.

Tonight, on the eve of mastectomy #2, we all had dinner out on the lake again, at my aunt and uncle's house. After dinner my mom slipped away and came back announcing she had a presentation to make. She told the story I just told you, and then pulled out of her bag a completed quilt, saying to me with a smile, "The sun still shines!" Tears came readily, and I got up to give her a big hug. It is beautiful, just perfect.

I think tomorrow will be okay after all.

"The sun still shines" plus the photo that served as inspiration.