Hi everyone ! I’ve been busy quilting and teaching, but wanted to tell you a bit about my dad, half brother Charlie, and friend Linda MacIntosh Wauchope, who introduced me to the existence of quilting magazines back in 1989 (and to those who read my posts on the quiltart and Janome6500, please excuse the repetition). I’d like to dedicate my donation to the FFAC Auction, the quilt in the previous post called “The Tree” to them. (For more info on the Reverse Auction,visit Virginia Spiegel’s website and FFAC Reverse Auction page here )

Daddy in the 1980s, with his afternoon cocktail and newspaper in front of the house

Daddy began smoking cigars when he was about 17 (back in 1916…yep, he was OLD–almost 59 when I was born). When he was 82, he got a cough that wouldn’t go away. On a Thursday evening, he wrapped up the day with his usual cigars (stinky, icky blech!), but didn’t have time for his morning cigar on Friday because of his early doctor’s appointment. The doctor told him he had throat cancer, and if he didn’t quit smoking and drinking he would die. He quit cold turkey and never had another smoke. He joked that at age 82, he wouldn’t like long enough to see if he’d survive past five years that would show they had truly “caught it” all. Well, he lived to 96 and died peacefully of old age. And he never smoked again, and only took up drinking in the last couple of years (Mom thought it was self-medicating for pain). Here’s a photo of me with Dad circa 1958.

Charlie was 46 when he was diagnosed with cancer. If anyone remembers the professional football player Rosie Greer, Charlie looked like him except he was white. At 6’4″, his weight ranged from 240 to 300 pounds, he called his car a rolling ashtray, and consumed 4 packs of cigarettes a day (in addition to being an unreformed alcoholic).

My two half brothers holding me, summer 1958, Tom J on the left, Charlier on the right.

With no health insurance, Charlie (known outside the family as Chuck, but to us he is always Charlie) delayed health care. By the time he was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas, it was too late for anything other than palliative care. He died three months later. Since he was in his early 20s when I was born (to daddy’s second wife), he was more like a distant cousin to me. But I remember he called me “Peanut,” and when he was around we laughed and laughed and laughed…he was SO funny, and could tease people in such a way that not only were they not offended, they’d be laughing harder than anyone.

Graduation from High School, 1975, Charlie in his “adult” size! and ever-present shades.

Linda was there when I was at the beginning of my quilting journey, she was a knitter who quilted, and she was a good friend. I met her when our spouses were assigned to the US Embassy in Libreville, Gabon (her hubby was Ambassador, Paul was his deputy–that meant neither Linda nor I were allowed to work at the Embassy even though we were both foreign service officers, too–which meant Linda and I had no income but lots of time to quilt, play, yak, eat and have fun).

When I was pregnant with Joshua in 1993, I remember going to lunch in April with her. I was two months along and the button on the itty-bitty waist of my red pleated skirt was already getting tight. As we left the restaurant, Linda looked at my waist and (drat it all, she was right) told me it would never fit again. Then she told me this weird bump had “popped up” near her diaphragm. The next day, she went to an appointment with the doctors at Johns Hopkins (we lived/worked in the DC area, but her family was from Baltimore, so she always went there for medical care). One week later, the doctors removed and ELEVEN POUND tumor, the size of a honeydew melon which the doctor needed two hands to lift. They thought they had gotten it all.

Six months later, as Linda was preparing a baby shower for us, she got this ominous feeling. Unfortunately, she was correct again. The cancer was back. By the time Joshua was a couple of months old, she was in chemo for myolyo sarcoma (spelling? or was it lyomyosarcoma?) Anyway, it is a particularly virulent form of cancer. If anyone deserved to live based on positive attitude it was Linda. During chemo weeks, she’d schedule lunch dates for Monday to Wednesday so she’d have something to enjoy each day (by the end of the week she felt too yucky for company), and said all the nurses wanted her because she was cheery. Since I was then on maternity leave, I’d pick up another friend at work and Monica, Joshua (nursing at first) and I would pick up lunch and head to Linda’s chemo room. They ran through the regular treatments, then moved on to experimental chemo courses. By the last round, Joshua was inhaling four jars of baby food at a sitting and working on chewing with his many new teeth.

Linda finally told the doctor that she didn’t want to spend what was left of her life sitting in doctors’ offices finding out how much her cancer had grown. She told him she’d be back when she needed morphine, and that’s what she did. Her husband took an early retirement (about six months earlier than planned). Her sons were about the age mine are now…3rd and 8th grade. Linda, ever the Type A, called the teachers and asked them to cut the boys some slack, since she was dying! She planned her funeral, and gave away quilting books and fabric (I still have some). She offered to give me a quilt top I’d helped her with a couple of years earlier, and instead I offered to quilt it (KING sized!) for her. Fortunately, on of they guys at work said, when I answered his question about Linda that she was told she had six months, that that usually meant half that time. I started quilting like a madwoman–I’d get Joshua into tubby and bed, then go quilt until bedtime. I got the finished quilt to her two weeks before she died, in August 1994, and she was still able to hold a pen and sign it, and insisted that I sign the label too. Her hubby still uses it on his bed. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone stronger than Linda, except maybe her mom, who was there at home with her holding her hand when she died.

I miss them all, and hope that some day (not too soon please) I’ll get to hug them again, and laugh, and tell tall tales, some of which will be true. And in the meantime, I think every now and then I hear Linda cackling away, sitting up on some cloud, at the latest idiocies from inside the Beltway.

This may be my all-time favorite photo of me with my dad and brothers, circa 1964/first grade (I think in Sausalito, California, where we lived at the time, but maybe in San Francisco?). I always think of this photo as “Three Gangsters and a little girl”

To all who have slogged through this far, thanks for bearing with me, and for letting me remember Daddy, Charlie and Linda. And MAJOR thanks to Virginia, for organizing this on-going fundraising effort, and to Karey and all her helpers at IQA / Quilts Inc., for helping further the cause.

Cheers, Sarah

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