Thread for the Quilt 

The Dying: John Carter 

One of the first things I noticed about our boy when he was born was his hands. 

So tiny, soft, and fragile. How can hands like that hold so much of my heart? He grips my finger and squeezes it, and when I look at him I see everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. But then, I look at him and I see, too, everything I am unable to do with my time left on Earth. His sister, just five, has three freckles on her hand that form a line. She says, “Daddy, look at the little freckles. Let’s name them.” She’s so pure and perfect. 

Things you love now will turn to things you dread in due time. 

An edge is man’s most primitive tool. It gets in between tight spaces, and, with the right amount of pressure, can make space or split things in two. Every parent wants to give their kids an edge. We see our children as special, perfect, sharp things capable of taking the tiny piece of Earth we gave them and making space for themselves. The world, though, is not kind to sharp objects. It crushes them before they can crush it. It melts them down, grinds them to dust, bends them until they break. It slowly chips away at them until they’re small enough to not pose a threat. The world takes sharp things and makes them smooth, dull, polished. Ornaments and warnings. 

It is the most fundamental instinct for a parent- for most parents- to want to instill in their children what they hope will last when the world takes them and makes them smooth. My children don’thave to split the world in two. They don’t even have to make a dent. But I hope they don’t crumble when the Earth pushes down on them. 

The biggest regret that I will leave behind when I’m gone is that I didn’t get the chance to teach my son these lessons. If he does get scorched, shattered, squeezed, then I hope he becomes gentler and kinder for it. I hope he doesn’t bear it badly and punish others because he didn’t have a father who taught him how to hold a boulder on his back. I hope and I know that you will do a great jobraising them. The love I have for this life only culminates in the most painful dread now that I have to face losing it. Ideally, and yet tragically, I hope they won’t blame me too much for not being there. 

The Widow: Linda Carter 

I’m sitting in the nursery watching our baby boy in his crib and holding our darling daughter in my lap. I am in this moment overwhelmed by peace and love for this life I have and the lives I have created with you, the love of my life. He has gorgeous blond hair and the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen on a baby. His little hand wrapped around my finger is the most perfect puzzle piece Godhas created. I’m in love with him. 

Watching my little daughter fall in love with being a big sister has been the greatest joy of my life. She sits there watching him like a sitcom, chin resting on her hands and beaming at this weird, glorious doll that appeared in her old playroom. She asked me this morning if you were giving Little Brother your good days since he didn’t know how to make them himself yet. I told her that everycoo, every smile, every stretch, every giggle, every happiness he has is your gift to him. 

And to her, too. Every time she gets that warm feeling in her heart and she realizes how happy she is with her piece of Earth, she’ll know that’s you sending her all of your happiness. I’ll teach her to take care of it and teach him how to appreciate it. 

She is too young to understand the kind of sickness that doesn’t go away. My heart breaks every time I remember how she has to learn about it through you. And the poor boy. He won’t evenknow you. I don’t know how long you’ll be around, but I know I want you to be around longer than you can be. I just want him to know you. To know how loved he is by you and that if you could’vehad it any other way, you would’ve. And her. Our strong girl. She has the burden of remembrance, for she knows how loved she was by you and will go her whole life searching for that love again. I hope she will remember you and forgive you. And I hope she’ll find someone she can love well. 

When we visit you in the hospital tonight I want us to take pictures- even if the flash is off or we leave the lens cap on. I had an epiphany that there will be no more after this. This is it, our oneshot at more red eyes, lens flares, and blurs. Like fools, we waited till you were dying to realize how tiny the grains of sand were that we walked on. The photo book is thinning. 

The Father’s Daughter: Bessie Carter 

My little brother asks me, “Do you remember Dad’s funeral?” I smirk. 

“Yes, of course.” 

“What do you remember?” 

I look at our mother and laugh. 

“I remember that I forgot to brush my teeth and that Mom and I fought because she wanted me to wear a black dress, but I wanted to wear the bright pink one. She got too exhausted to care at somepoint. Or just didn’t think it mattered in the grand scheme of things. And then we got breakfast at McDonald’s and I spilled syrup all over my dress because Mom was crying so hard she couldn’t see the road. She was swerving and breaking like a crazy woman. You were in your car seat squawking and screaming, which of course pissed us both off even more.” 

I watch our mother wipe tears from her wrinkled cheeks. 

“I remember Mom leaning over during the ceremony because I was crying. She was telling me that it’s going to be okay, and I said I was upset that my dress was ruined. A little, teary eyed ball of pink tulle with a trembling chin sitting in the front row of a church pew swinging her feet back and forth, trying to pay attention. The sticky wet of the syrup. There were all of these people I had never seen before shaking my hand and high fiving me and giving me hugs.” 

“Do you remember what we did afterward?” our mom interjects. “Are you kidding? Of course I do.” 

There’s a moment of frowning, sympathetic remembrance. Us both trying not to cry. “You took me to get ice cream and then we went to the pool with Kaylee and Aunt 

Jamie.” It was a special thing for her to do. “And we spent the next day drying the 5,000 dollars worth of flowers, hanging them up in my room with ribbons.” 

My mom chimes in, “You said they were too pretty to let them die.” 

The Mother: Jane Klein Carter 

When we got you a dog after your father moved back to his home, it felt like a cheat. He was a little Boston Terrier. The Wildest Thing on Earth. A little glare of white and black racing around the house at all hours. Across the green ground moss, up and down the stairs, through the hole he dug under the fence, along the fast white stream near the road. 

I remember he used to chew the eyes off your stuffed animals. You would cry and scream and he would lick your face, completely oblivious to the immense distress he put his favorite person through. And you’d forgive him in that funny way kids do. A tug of the ear. A kiss on the white spot above his eye. 

You swore up and down that you hated that dog and that you wanted a cat. But I knew this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Every night when you were a baby he curled up on the floor by your crib, and when you grew up, he slept at the foot of your bed. 

Remember? Before I’d sneak in to tuck you in, I’d listen behind the door to you talking to him. “You’re the best doggie in all of the world. I wouldn’t trade you for a million dollars. You’re my best friend.” 

When he ran away through the hole he had dug below the fence that he always seemed to come back from, you were concerned that he would forget about us. You sat at the front door waiting, watching for signs of life, eager for his return. Like me. I knew you’d grow up to be like me. I knew I’d have to worry about you. And I do. I worry that down the road, when you realize you saw the dog more than your father, when you wonder where he was, you won’t be as willing to forgive him. 

He was the best dog. He was the first one to teach you mercy. He wasn’t the first one to leave and not come back. He was the first one to teach me that waiting for a dog that ran away is like trying to hold running water. 

The Ghost: Peter Carter 

The night we met was our first party of the fall semester. I scanned the faces in the dark corners of the house and backyard for my friend Rose and the pretty blonde she’d told me about named Jane. 

I had given up around 1 a.m. and crashed into the tore-up sofa in the backyard that I’d watched Max Kolbe puke into earlier, consoling myself with a megaphone to yell at pledges picking up girlson the back lawn instead of beer cans. I was about to throw a can on the ground and watch the pledges scurry to pick it up when I saw a girl stumbling into the woods. I followed her, half curious, half concerned. I must have snapped a twig or burped or something, because she swung around, wielding a key like a knife and squealing, “I have a weapon of self defense!” 

“So do I,” I said, holding up my megaphone, prompting her to start screaming and running. I started chasing after her, unaware in the moment that her drunken hysteria was justified and I looked like a killer. I called after her, “I’m not chasing you! I’m just following you! There’s bears and frat boys in these woods!” laughing as I said it. 

“Get away from me!” she screamed back in her best Janet Leigh impression. I stopped and watched her disappear farther into the black brush, wondering if I should turn around or increase my valiant efforts. I heard a splash and a scream, so I started sprinting blindly through thorns and poison oak to find her. She was flailing and sobbing when I found her standing shoulder deep in the thick ink of nighttime river water. “It’s freezing!” she cried, reaching for my hand and kicking her feet to fight off imaginary gators and anacondas. 

“Did you forget I’m the guy who was chasing you and trying to kill you?” I laughed, watching her panic. Sufficiently amused and tired of hearing her hysterics, I took her hand and pulled her out, watching her shiver as she wrung out her gingham dress. I stood and watched as she caught her breath. 

She gasped and started frantically looking in the pine straw and leaves around her. “My other shoe is gone! I think it’s in the water,” she whined. I slipped into the water, feeling the cold watercrash into my face as I grazed the ground with my hands. I sifted blindly through the sand and branches until I felt the plastic of a too-expensive sneaker. I rose back up to the surface with the shoe, presenting it to her as I spat out water. 

Cinderella in the swamp. She took it and laughed, dumbfounded at this random guy with peach fuzz and glasses who turned out to be her savior instead of her demise. I laughed with her. Her teeth shone like tiny white jasmine flowers in the midnight moonlight. 

“I’m Jane Klein.” 

“Thank you, God,” I mumbled. She couldn’t hear me. “I’m Peter Carter,” I said, shaking her wet hand. I remember her face like it was yesterday. She liked me, and I could tell, even with my foolish eyes. We walked back to the house, talking about our majors and futures and hometowns. We went to my room in the house and I gave her a change of clothes. An LSU sweatshirt two sizes too big and a pair of sweatpants with various stains. 

“I can’t go out there wearing this,” she huffed. “You don’t have to go back out there,” I smiled. I never got that sweatshirt back. 

That night we met never stops playing over in the back of my mind. I still see you as you were that night- spirited and bright, scared and confident. Beautiful. It’s been years since that night when you saw a killer and I saw my future. I wish I could go back and tell you not to take that hand. That the freezing water was better than what we would do to each other. That the boy you fell in love with would turn out to be an awful man who hits. Who cheats. Who lies. Who leaves. 

The Son: Luke Carter 

I went straight to the library after the doctor. I told you I was working late on a client’s case, but I was ransacking the medical aisles for books on Glioblastoma. When glial cells, often called the ‘glue’ of the nervous system, mutate and grow too rapidly, they build a tumor in the brain or spinal cord. Mine happens to be in my brain, which I think may be worse, but I’m not sure. These tumors grow quickly and aggressively, invading healthy tissue. Mine grew so quickly that the doctors didn’t detect it until it was too developed to cut out through surgery. The tumor presses against the skulland creates pressure, headaches, and nausea. I have all of these. 

What I don’t have- yet- are the more severe effects: memory loss, personality changes, seizures, difficulty speaking, paralysis. It only took two doctors visits for the doctors to come up with adiagnosis. An MRI scan one visit, a CT scan the next. On the next visit, they asked me to bring my wife because they’d have to perform a biopsy and go over treatment plans. They said ‘treatment plans’ instead of ‘steps to recovery’ or ‘preventative procedures.’ When they said that, I asked what this diagnosis means. “Will I survive?” in so many words. 

“Radiation and chemotherapy. Lots of medicine and rest. Try to avoid stress. If you can, try to forget you have cancer- that should take a lot of the stress away. Be prepared for the glioblastoma toresist the treatment though; a lot of our treatments aren’t effective enough to completely eradicate the tumor or stop growth.” 

What they didn’t tell me, I found on page 243 of a college textbook next to scribbles in the margins. “Individuals with glioblastoma are typically only expected to live up to 12-18 months afterdiagnosis. Only 25% of patients survive more than a year.” A year if I’m unlucky- a year and a half if I am lucky- is all I have left. Maybe less than that. I’ll find that out next Tuesday. 

It took me four years to graduate college. Four more years to graduate law school. 

I’ve been at this firm for only six months post-grad, and before long I’ll have to quit to vomit in buckets and plan my own funeral. 

I went home that night- burdened by my diagnosis and the knowledge I’d gained from reading about it- to you, my wife, who knew nothing about my visits to the doctor. You had dinner readyon a plate in the dining room and that good record we got from the big farmers market in St. Augustine was spinning. Spinning. Point of Know Return by Kansas I think. I sunk into my relaxed state- a facade or a reaction, I’m not sure- and spun you around in the kitchen. 

“You’re so much later than I thought you’d be,” you pouted. “I made dinner.” “I see that,” I smiled, untying your apron. 

“Your mother’s coming over.” “Oh, good.” The apron fell. 

“I have news,” you said, lighting a candle and laying forks on the table. “So do I.” “I can’t wait to hear it.” 

Our hearts dropped. All four. The salmon was delicious. The asparagus was a little raw. 

“You’re pregnant.” “Hooray!” 

“I’m sick.” “That’s how your father died.” 

“What should we name our baby?” “Should we have the baby?” “Of course we should.” 

“You’ll get better.” “No I won’t.” “No he won’t.” 

I think in another life it could have been the happiest day of my life. We have time. For a little while, at least. One final joke from God. One final joke from Him.