The Afghan

The upside to living through life’s downsides is that you come to understand how loved and cared for you are by the people around you. Dane, Mama Sue and I were recipients of world class support during those hospital and hospice months. We experienced more than our fair share of inspiring acts of kindness. I’ll be touching on these as we blog along, but for now, there is one I need to share.

I need to tell you about the knitters. And knitting.

Dana had never set out to be a knitter. She wasn’t anti-knitting, but just never had an opportunity to pick it up. A couple years before we were diagnosed with recurrence, Dane hosted a Purple Tree party for our friend Debba. Purple Tree was a direct sales organization in which you bought a jewelry kit and created, in craft-like fashion, your own accessories. Dane bought a kit that involved knitting a one-inch-square piece of fabric. The kit included instructions on how to knit the patch, but they were a bit confusing. Through Dane’s mom, Mama Sue, and some online help, Dana finished the patch, and was hooked on knitting.

In less than five years, Dane went from that little patch to knitting dozens of beautiful, cool, complex projects. For so many reasons, knitting was in Dane’s hobby and leisure wheelhouse. Maybe it was the combo of artistry, technical savvy (you have to follow these intricate patterns) and a sense of accomplishment that made it such an outlet. But it wasn’t just the craft that attracted Dane to knitting. It was the people that came with it.

And this is all why knitting was the perfect escape from chemo, anxieties, lymphedema, and all the other demons you have to face in the cancer fight. While the activity itself was therapeutic, the atmosphere of getting together with fellow knitters was downright restorative. As Dane began to explore this ancient craft, popping into stores here and there, and joining the premier knitter website (ravelry.com), she was soon brought into a true fellowship of fellow knitters. She became aware of different groups who got together simply to knit. One such group met in Germantown in a yarn shop housed in the town’s first jail (the bars are still in the thick, round windows.) The shop was appropriately named, “Ball and Skein.” It’s here that Dana would go and sit in a cozy atmosphere and knit with Carrie, Susan, Jenni, Theresa (Tree Dog), Mary, Nicole, Debbie, Jackie, Sheila and others. They’d meet once or twice a week and knit. And talk. And share. And quite simply, enter into each other’s lives. As the chemo fight wore on, getting together with knitters was one of the few things Dane enjoyed mustering the energy to do. It was amazing to see the deep friendships forged in such a short amount of time. Knitter friend Carrie was describing to me one of Dane’s projects a couple weeks ago and simply said, “There were a lot of conversations over every one of those stitches.” That’s how it worked.

A couple years ago Dane launched out on an ambitious project to knit me an afghan. But this wasn’t a normal afghan. Named “The Great American Afghan,” the pattern called for several 1-foot-square squares, each square representing a different type of knitting and stitch. Some squares had scenes (mountain trees, beach, a cat), others were intricate knitting patterns like cable-knit. It’s described as a project to help you grow in your knitting techniques. Dane had knit me a great scarf a couple years ago, but she wanted to give me something a little more advanced, and something that was definitely a “man-stitch” project. Over many months she knit these squares between her other knitting projects. But then life gave us its big downside last September and the afghan at that time was simply a stack of beautiful squares. Dane had been saying to her knitter friends, “If something happens to me, you guys have to finish this afghan for Bear.”

So it was with some trepidation that her knitter friends asked Dane one day soon after we were home from the hospital if she would like them to finish the afghan. Dane resolutely replied, “yes.” So they gathered up the squares, they added a few of their own (others had started with Dane on their own afghans, but bailed out for various reasons), and about four weeks later, the knitting corps came by the house to present Dane and me with my afghan. They had worked, planned, scheduled, re-scheduled, cried, re-cried. They enlisted the help of those who didn’t know Dane, and persevered through the most tedious part (the put-together) of the afghan. I cried, and re-cried. And Dana said, “You guys are crazy.”

It is now one of my most treasured possessions, and the most beautiful item I have in the house. The pix are at the end of the post (and there are more to come).

There is so much more to share about Dane and her knitter friends and her knitting. (In fact, they all meet tonight for the Winter Olympics opener to launch their own knitting Olympics—casting on tonight and casting off by closing ceremonies. Dana won this friendly “competition” during the last summer Olympics.) I needed to share this for several reasons. I am so grateful for the knitters (and for their friendships) and am indebted to the restorative outlet that they provided Dane. But also the afghan story is representative of the many labors of love that have been done for us in this cancer journey. We have great friends, family and healthcare providers (more on them later) who are so creative and thoughtful in their care-giving.

This kind of support helps the downsides not be so down.

Thank you all,
Barry