More (overdue) stitches

Updated 1/22/2017
  
It's catch-up time as shortly after I posted my progress in a Year of Stitches, I got too sick to stitch
.
Was it a bad pizza? Was it the flu? Who knows. I put the bed on the piece because I won't stitch the more appropriate toilet.

Next came three black hearts as I struggled with three deaths. First, my husband came home to say a co-worker had been killed. Then we learned a relative of his died. The final blow was learning that a close friend of my brothers had died.

 I decided to stitch a bare tree next. And then decided to do more with the hearts. I added a traffic construction cone next to one heart for my husband's co-worker.

I added an M for Maurer so I would remember always the heart was for a family member of my husband.

Next to the heart for the "Good One" I put a flower,  small tribute to Jimmy Buffet.  For years, I associated a grownup Jimmy with Jimmy -- he loved to party, have a good time and seemed to enjoy Buffet. 

The younger Jimmy? He was part of my brothers' group that was always hanging around. Always! His death surprised me but I was not surprised that each of my siblings wanted me to know he had died. 

What is amazing is how many in my siblings' childhood neighborhood have remained good friends through the years.

I say their neighborhood even though I lived there too. I  was the eldest, with different interests and responsibilities. One told me recently she saw me as "the big kid who was doing big kid things." Yeah, big kid things like the first with a job, the first with a car and the first to leave to go to college.

Many of them came to my mother's service last fall  even though she had moved away more then 40 years earlier. Many shared "remember when" experiences my poor mother lived through - unknowingly hiding a  runaway, her children using windows as midnight escape hatches to catch up with friends, coming home to find "too sick for school" kids were joined by friends ...  

 Jimmy kept reminding me to think of him as the "good one." He was not the one who borrowed my car. He was not the one who hid in our basement for days. He was not the one .. you get the drift.
  

I thought Jimmy was always at our house in Livonia. But I just learned my youngest brother met him on their first day of kindergarten. I am sure I would have learned more about Jimmy at his service. Alas, this flu thing continued so I missed out again. Sure going to miss that kid -- the one with a very good smile and a life filled with love.