Kiely Todd Roska: God's Love is Two Women From a Quilting Guild

Flash by Kiely Todd Roska
GOD’S LOVE IS TWO WOMEN FROM A QUILTING GUILD IN MISSOULA, MONTANA

You fly halfway across the country to clean your mom’s house and plan her funeral. She died by suicide a week and a half ago. For days, you and your sister sort dog dishes and dangly earrings and elephant-shaped plant holders. You drive back and forth to Goodwill. You fill a dumpster with broken lawn furniture and dog-haired covered rugs and freezer-burned food. You question the existence of God. You pray to a God you don’t believe in.

Your uncle and his sketchy buddy come over. They don’t offer to help sort or clean or haul anything. Instead, they question why you have a dumpster and why you aren’t organizing a garage sale. You tell them they are welcome to take anything out of the dumpster as long as they have their sale somewhere else. And so they do. They make a few hundred bucks for themselves.

You cancel credit cards with balances. You and your sister and your dad (who was divorced from your mom) pool your money to make the mortgage payment. You find the foamy pink curlers that your mom used to roll your hair for picture day and her stained recipe card for caramel that she made every Christmas.

Finally, you turn to the quilting stash. Four sewing machines. Reams of turquoise blue batiks. Floral flannel. An actual rainbow riot of thread. The colors cascade off bookshelves and onto the floor. It is a crafter’s version of a mad professor’s library. Partially finished quilts cover the backs of chairs and what used to be the dining room table. You have no idea what to do with twenty-eight quilts in various stages of completion. You don’t sew. Your sister doesn’t sew. Right now, you can’t think of anyone who sews.

On day three of the cleaning spree, two of your mom’s quilting guild friends offer to help you figure out what to do with her sewing stuff. You have not met these women before.

You were expecting advice—about thrift stores and websites.

Instead, the quilting women take one look at your greasy, unwashed hair and your sister’s over-plucked eyebrows. One woman whispers softly in the other’s ear. The other woman nods once. They gather everything into the back of their Toyota Tundra and say something about organizing a sale.

Four months later, in time for your mom’s funeral, they return with a check for $3,284 and all twenty-eight quilts—finished and folded.

This. This is what the love of God feels like.

Kiely Todd Roska is a hospice chaplain. She lives in Minnesota (on land first loved and stewarded by the Dakota people) where she spends her time wrangling and/or snuggling her spouse, two children, one dog, ten chickens, and thousands of bees. More at kielytoddroska.com.