the last words MARGO wrote were about quilting

Margo Takacs Marshall 1928-2010

My mom, Margo Takacs Marshall, passed away a month ago, around 1 pm, September 19th 2010.

She began feeling she might have had a mini-stroke two months earlier on July 12th.

Then at 1 pm, September 12th, two months later, she distinctly felt unwell and told my father " I think I have had (a full) stroke".

 Then she went off to the hospital in an ambulance and died exactly a week later.

Mom had kept a diary on yearly calendars, as many women do, for dozens of years.

Recently, I noticed that her very last entry she ever got to write was this :

"Quilting" ( her regular weekly quilting session with others at the rural community hall across the road) - and then in a much worse handwriting "very unwell".

Mom noticed the effects of her ongoing stroke, not when she felt very unwell - something she often was for the last 50 years of her life, but only when her writing got noticeably bad.

By the time I first saw my mom,the morning of the next day, she opened one eye (unseeing) and momentarily stared at the direction of my voice - just that once during the whole week, just that first time.

Most of the family did not even get that brief response.

So I feel that for me and most of my family, we weren't really there when mom started having her stroke and was still lucid.

 This handwritten note on her diary is the last we 'saw' of the mom we all knew, before she lapsed into a total stupor.

It is a small bit of writing but very precious to me.

And how appropriate that the last thing mom ever wrote was about quilting - for the last 40 years she had defined herself first and foremost, not as a mother or spouse or gardener but rather as a quilter .

 And it was as a 'quilter' that Margo died in harness, doing what she loved most....