Life is like a patchwork quilt, where every patch represents a story, event, person, place, or time-period in your life. Each patch starts with the “living threads” you create every day of your life, which ultimately results in a “fabric-of-life” woven from your experiences, and the people, places, and things that you encounter along your path in life.
As you travel your one and only journey through this life, you leave behind you the patches that you have made, which are stitched together by time into your “Patchwork-Quilt-of-Life”, which is uniquely defined by a pattern that is yours alone.
For most of your life, the threads, patches, and patterns you made, are mostly invisible. It’s typically only later in life, as you review and put your life in perspective, instead of just narrowly focusing on its individual patches, that you become aware of your “Patchwork-Life”.
Through reflection and introspection, you become both judge and jury in examining and judging the quality of workmanship, and the beauty of your life-quilt. As you become more and more conscious of the quilt you have been making over the years, your work starts to become finer, with more thought and care put into each new thread you stitch. Suddenly, you can see the poor workmanship and carelessness of your past handiwork, and being the “master-quilter” you long-ago envisioned becoming in life, you take a little more time and care to make what is now becoming your “legacy”, as well as a beautiful reminder and example to those “aspiring-quilters” that are just starting to weave their own Patchwork-Life-Quilt.
Perhaps one day, after your life-quilt has been finished, it will be proudly displayed by someone you loved, and that loved you, so that everyone that sees it will say… “What a beautiful quilt! I wish I could make a quilt like that!”. The good news is that they, and you can, if you take the time, and show the care, kindness, and love needed in each and every thread, stitch, and patch, sewn into your “Patchwork Quilt of Life”.
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This story is dedicated with great gratitude and love to the memory of my Aunt, Florence Liverman, who inspired me with her “Patchwork Quilt”, which proudly hangs on my wall, and because she showed her love for me, and everyone that knew her, with every stitch she made in her life.
Walter Franklin Davis, Wilmington, NC
November 10, 2017
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