Grieving with Gratitude

I love my Virginia quilters!

This past weekend was the Quilters Unlimited show in Chantilly, VA.  I have done this show for 3 years.  It's really a wonderful show at a huge venue with lots of great quilts and many vendors. It's organized by a consortium of VA guilds and each guild has a different responsibility.  It's one of my best shows.  And thanls to this show, I have been invited to many of the guilds as a presenter.  

The invitation to be a vendor arrived while Don was pretty sick.  I didn't sign up.  I wasn't sure about the future.  After he passed away, I received an email from the Vendor Coordinators, Carla and Ellen, with their sympathies and gently asking if I was planning on returning.  I told them I just wasn't sure.  In their final email, they told me that if I didn't decide by a certain date, that I couldn't have "my spot", but they would always find a place for me no matter when I decided.  Their kindness and consideration helped me to decide to take the plunge and return for 2019, and I am so glad that I did.  As I wrote in my first sentence "I love my VA quilters".

They came and they came and they came.  Some came to give me a big hug.  Some approached and quietly told me how sorry they were.  Some brought actual finished projects from my workshops.  Some came to show me photos of their finished projects.  And some came to tell me to make sure I saw the Mini Mosaic quilts from my workshops in their show.  I was overwhelmed with kindness.  My heart was bursting. Some of them had meant Don at a quilt show, but they all knew how important he was to me and my success. To say that I was overjoyed that I had decided to come was an overstatement. 

Don used to come with me to all my shows.  I would demonstrate either Curvalicious or the Mini Mosaics and he was the cash register.  We made a great team, because I was interested in sharing my quilting and  he  was happy that I was making money doing it.  He even attended the shows when he was on the portable oxygen.  He was reticent and embarrassed but I told him that anyone who walked away or judged him because of that, I wouldn't want as my customer. It worked and he came.  But after a while he just didn't have the strength. I was sad not to have him with me, but I had some wonderful friends that came and helped me. Here's something that not many people know.  He was able to monitor my sales as I swiped credit cards.  He knew when my first sale was, when it was slow, what was selling and how I was doing by logging onto my Paypal account.  It made him feel connected and part of the action.  We would debrief every night and he would always say that he wished he could be with me.  

So instead of having my honey with me, I did the next best thing.

 She kept me company underneath my table resting on one of my quilts.