Darn It, Loss Happens

Stitching ourselves back together when loss tears us apart

Image: The Woolery

There was a time when mending things grew out of necessity. Elbows in jumpers, holes in socks, knees in jeans, moth holes and hems. Clothing demanded more than a season - they were handed down through families like bath water.

“Mum,’ she confessed regretfully. ‘I was climbing the tree in my beautiful blue dress and look …” It’s ok I say, it’s a nice straight tear, I can mend it easily.

Yes, I’m a mender, though I know with familiarity, some things, cannot be mended easily.

Loss when you love far, fierce and fastidiously, is not the kind of tear easily mended. Death is normal, it happens. It’s a sure thing. Though when it happens to meet us, the rupture, is rarely a nice straight one.

Japanese Sashiko techniques are often used to repair and reinforce damaged fabric in decorative stitches, to repurpose it into something unique. The process involves simple running stitches, usually in white thread on indigo-dyed fabric, though other colors and fabrics can be used.

Image: Jessica Marquez

To mend, we must acknowledge and embody what accompanies loss. When we work with grief, and let it work us, ruptures can be sutured.

There are some rules to make it better, but no restriction(s) you have to follow. There shouldn’t be any “right” or “wrong” in Sashiko art. As long as the art has the purpose of “appreciating the fabric by repairing, stitching, and strengthing. (source)

Loose Ends is a volunteer handwork finishing organisation who assist with projects people have left unfinished due to death or disability. The Facebook page spills over with genuine outpourings of appreciation and completed projects that mean the world.

People from all over the world are invited to submit projects or become a finisher.

A couple of months ago we (Loose Ends) posted a moving photo of Beate's dad holding the unfinished sweater his wife was knitting for him before she passed away. The sweater has been completed by Loose Ends Project finisher, Sita, and returned for Beate's dad's 99th birthday.

Handcrafted work is work of love. To wear or hold a work of love from the hands of someone you loved; profoundly moving.

To wear a piece of jewellery, item of clothing or carry a small keepsake … these transitional objects bring us back into proximity with who has passed from us.

We may feel discombobulated following loss - it’s hard to know where to direct your love, when the ways you have known how to love, irrevocably changes. Transitional objects offer comfort and connection, they are rich in symbolism and extend a way of continuing bonds after loss

Kate Thériault used their Dad’s ties to patch their favourite shirt after he died suddenly of a stroke. Kate says, This act makes me stronger. Every stitch is a prayer.

I feel a deep grounding as I slow down to be present and remember that with time and dedication, all things can and will heal. I expect my grief to arrive as waves of memories crash to the shore, like the lines of stitches running over the holes in my shirt. I hope to hold the pain of this great loss with the same gentleness that I now hold my shirt. With its patches made of my dad's ties, it will always be a reminder that he was here on this earth, that he loved us so deeply and that we loved him too.

Merging Kate’s shirt with their Dad’s ties brought comfort in the making as well as the wearing. The sensorial nature of holding something in your hands that belonged to your person may offer a sense of connection, peace, a sense of being a little less lonely. For some people it can feel precious, cathartic and profound.

Any article about mending would not be complete without weaving in the formidable Lee MingWei. The Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco exhibits The Mending Project (2009–present).

Mingwei uses the simple act of sewing as a means to connect and share an experience. Visitors are invited to bring items of clothing in need of repair that Lee Mingwei or his designated host will mend and embellish.

As mending ensues there is an intentional celebration and commemoration in the making of repair. Mingwei refers to the fabric damage as ‘scars’ - a metaphor for trauma and loss. Some of the garments make their way into the installation, being connected to the wall by a thread. Such seemingly simple work is truly intimate, transformative qualities and profound bonds.

I sat with with women last week from the Country Women’s Association. Women together, animated and reflective, making and mending with many colours of wool and cotton thread. The double doors were wide open and welcoming, sun flooding in as we sat and chatted; dropping into sharing quickly. Tales of childhood, memories of meals, holidays, car rides, stories of parents and siblings. They openheartedly shared their morning-tea cream sponge and I thought I quite like it here, I feel at home amongst weathered hands and enduring hearts.

Loss lets us down, it can put us in a tumble spin and even hangs us out to dry. In making, in mending we come into relationship with our tattered wounded parts and we tend. The slow and deliberate work of mending, repairs people as well as things. What is made is not so much new, but altered.

I wonder, in tending loss, do we not also repurpose ourselves into something unique. It may not be decorative initially but I am learning that we can remember again, what is beautiful in life, and in us.

Sashiko is said to be ‘a process’. In a busy world, mending is slow work - as Trevor Hall sings You Can’t Rush Your Healing - mending is still needed, we can always pick up what is torn and begin the slow work of repair. As we swallow our tears and wear inside scars, maybe what is needed is more sashiko more than invisible stitches.

Refs
https://www.facebook.com/looseendsproject/
https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/nowornever/what-s-old-is-new-again-how-the-pandemic-is-inspiring-people-to-reuse-everything-1.5917402/how-repairing-a-shirt-can-help-mend-a-grieving-heart-1.5918464