I've been away a while. I have been putting this post off but can no longer stall. I can't go on with this blog without posting about this and I need to continue, so here it is. I have to report another death. On September 12, my very dear friend, Ursula Hitch, was killed in an ATV accident. Three and a half months have gone by and I've thought about her every single day of it. After this much time I think it's finally starting to seem real to me. For the longest time every time I thought about her (and I think about her a
lot, she just pops in there at odd times when I'm not expecting it) it was with this total sense of unreality. Like a bad dream. And it seemed so impossible that she wasn't going to just walk in my back door, pour a cup of coffee and sit at my table and start chatting. How can she just be gone? She of all people. But you probably didn't know my friend Ursula. She was amazing. So much energy and so kind and funny. She was probably the most giving person I ever knew. I can sit in any room of my house, look around, and see half a dozen things she gave me. Knick-knacks, fabric, quilted wall hangings she made herself, wind chimes, a bird feeder, two bird feeders in fact. And tons and tons of sewing things, some of them homemade. Things for my kitchen. She was always showing up with something for me. "I saw this and it made me think of you," and it was always something I loved. She knew me so well. And now with it being Christmas, well. Going through the ornaments this year, so many of them came from her--mostly the ones with cardinals on them. She knew I loved cardinals because they remind me of my mother and I collect snowflake ornaments because I just love them. There must be a dozen or more things for my tree that she gave me. As I said, I can sit in any room of my house or in my back yard and look around and be reminded of her and how much she loved me and that's a huge comfort.
Here's how I found out she died: Sunday, September 13 was Sanity Seeker Sunday. Ursula was supposed to pick me up because Val and Travis took the Jeep to Lewiston to go fishing. Riley was going to come to the quilt shop with us so we were all packed up and ready to go. I wanted to go a little early because I needed to pick something up at JoAnn's or something. I tried calling her cell phone at about 9 am or so. I called her land line too and left a message on both phones. It was so unusual that she wouldn't call me back that I started worrying a little bit, but mostly just thought, "Oh, she must be doing something and forgot her phone,". But that little part of me-the one that always thinks the worst-was going, Uh-oh, uh-oh, something's not right. SS starts at noon and when she wasn't here by a quarter after I thought she must have somehow forgotten. I called Suzie on her cell and I asked her if Ursula was there yet and said she was supposed to pick me up. The connection was bad, cutting in and out like it does sometimes when I make a call from my kitchen, but I thought she sounded funny. She said, "Wendy is on her way to get you." Okay, so Wendy will pick us up and I can give Ursula a lot of crap for forgetting me when she finally shows up. Five minutes later I saw Wendy coming up my walk and Riley and I headed out the door with our stuff. Wendy said, "Wait, can we go back inside for a minute?" and you know how you feel when you know something bad is coming? That sense of dread that stretches time out and distorts things like a cartoon? I turned around and went back inside and Wendy followed. She told me to sit down. Nope, no way. That's what they tell you to do when they give you bad news. "What's wrong?" I asked, "Is it Ursula?" She said there had been an accident, Ursula and Jim were riding four-wheelers and there was an accident. "Is she okay?" I asked, "Is she hurt?" Wendy was crying and shaking, "No. She died." I started screaming and Wendy was hugging me. The rest is foggy. I know I sat on the couch and cried, Riley was on my lap, poor kid. I know she was scared--who wouldn't be at six years old, seeing her mother hysterical? Finally, I calmed down and Wendy asked me what I wanted to do. Val wasn't here and I knew I couldn't stay home. I said I wanted to go to the quilt shop. Wendy, Suzie and Sarah were the only ones there. Someone who knew Ursula and knew about the accident had called the quilt shop only about five minutes before I called Suzie. Teri took the call and called Suzie to the phone so they had just found out what had happened when I called. We got there and just sat, stunned. I don't know how many times one of us said, "This is so unreal. This is not happening." One by one, the rest of the group trickled in and Suzie or Wendy would give them the news. It was awful to watch. Shock and disbelief. Nancy dissolved into immediate tears. Mary laughed at first in disbelief, like we were joking, and then started crying. I stepped outside to see if I could call Val. I wanted him home as soon as possible. I called and he was actually on his way. I told him what had happened and when he got into town, he and Travis came to the quilt shop and got Riley. When the rest of the group had gotten there and everyone knew, we just sat for the longest time, all eight of us, a giant box of tissues on the table, and cried and stared at each other. Finally, Nancy stood up and said she was going to get some wine. Someone suggested we all go to La Casa Lopez and drink margaritas. That's definitely what Ursula would have done. So we did. We took our ginormous box of Kleenex and drove downtown to our favorite Mexican restaurant and drank heavily for the next two hours. I can't even imagine how that particular day would have gone if I hadn't been with that amazing group of women. We cried and talked and laughed. I was worried about Mary and Wendy and Nancy said later they were worried about me. I was so in denial. I kept waiting for Ursula to walk in and announce the best practical joke ever. Or for someone to call and say there had been a mistake, she was hurt but going to be okay. It was very surreal. The alcohol took the edge off of everything but we were all hurting. There was this indescribable closeness in that group. We've always been a tight clan but there's nothing like a death to bring people together. We finally broke up at around three and Wendy took me home. I knew Ursula's family best so I had volunteered to be the liaison and keep everyone posted. The next week was a nightmare. The Sanity Seekers got together several times to talk and cry. That's how we got through it. I'm so glad we had that. I know I couldn't have coped without them. Val was very supportive, of course. He was grieving too-Ursula had been a huge part of our lives since before Travis was born-and he was there for me but in this particular case, it was all about Girlfriends, you know? The funeral was surreal. So many people. Ursula had worked for years as a birthing coach (which is how I met her) so there were people who knew her from those days. Her daughter had been active in gymnastics for years and Ursula worked part time in the gym so there were gymnastics people. She had also worked for hospice and many, many people knew her from that venue. Her husband Jim is a firefighter so there was the Firefighter community. And then there were the quilters. She touched so many lives in so many ways. The Sanity Seekers stood in a tight little group. Val and my mother in law were beside me and Stephanie and Tyler came so I had my own little support group as well as the SS. I met Ursula's three sisters for the first time. That was weird. I had heard about them for years of course. I felt like I knew them already and it was so weird actually meeting them without her there.
Jim asked me to go through Ursula's quilt room. That was hard, but also kind of therapeutic. The first two times I went there, Jim wasn't home and I was alone. I wasn't freaked out at all. In fact, it felt kind of peaceful. They had just moved into a new house twenty miles away from town two months before the accident and I had never actually been there so the house didn't
feel like Ursula. All of her things were there, though. All the little touches that were her. I was able to sit in her sewing chair and cry and talk to her and cry some more. I told her that I loved her and that I would miss her. Since then, I have been back several times. Ursula had a lot of UFOs (for the non-crafty: UnFinished Objects, in this case, quilts). I took those and Mary had the brilliant idea that we (Sanity Seekers) should finish these for her family. There were enough quilt tops for us to finish as wedding quilts and baby quilts for all three kids. Ursula's kids are 23, 21 and 18. She was so looking forward to being a grandmother someday. She talked about it all the time. I am so sad for her family. Her kids are so amazing, all three of them. She was such a good mom and would have been a really wonderful grandmother.
Ugh. I can't write about this anymore. I will write more later, but for now, I am wrung out. This craft blog has turned into a Death Blog and I don't want to report any more of this kind of news.
I wish I had something sweet and profound to say to tie all of this up, but I don't. I think of my sweet friend every day and I had a dream the other night where I was hugging her really, really hard and crying and telling her over and over again that I loved her and I was going to miss her. Maybe that's what took this whole thing from denial and disbelief to, finally, acceptance? I'm ready to move on, I guess. I'll never stop missing her. I will never have another friend quite like her. She was the one person that I could tell anything to, that I could be completely myself with. The one friend who could come to my house in whatever state of chaos it happened to be in and I knew I didn't have to apologize or make excuses and that she would never, ever judge me. God help me, I'm too old to break in another best friend and it makes me feel very alone and sad. I know I wasn't half the friend to her that she was to me and it makes me feel ashamed but I also knew that she didn't hold it against me and she loved me anyway. She was like that, my friend Ursula.
