Hilda's Sweater

The tiniest things will set me off. Small, intimate moments in which the realization that someone who was always there is now gone. I get overwhelmed sometimes and I cry.

The house. Her house holds so many memories. It's a shrine to the 1970s, almost unchanged since her husband died in 1983. He had done all the work, putting up wallpaper, the panelling in the basement. In that house, she always had him with her.


Now she's gone and all we have, for a little while, is the house.

My husband lived in that house while I was dating him in the late 1980s. It was his '76 mustang in the driveway, the car that assured we met in the first place. I needed a ride to university, since I too was living at home with my parents to save money on the cost of my education. His mother only learned to drive when she was in her sixties, after my husband left home and got married, twenty-one years ago. (Our wedding anniversary was on September 8. Hilda passed away three days later, on September 11.)

We showed the realtor around the house, my husband and I, in preparation for selling it when the time comes. When all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed and the last will and testament is probated and "the estate" is collapsed. My mother-in-law, that dynamic woman with a will of iron -- the nurses in the hospital joined us in calling her "the little German tank" -- now exists only in warm memories and cold cash.

Memories...

I wanted to talk about knitting. She was a knitter, my mother-in-law, before carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis took that away from her. She was the first person I ever saw knit in continental style, picking the yarn with her left needle instead of throwing it with her right hand.

Once, when I was a newlywed back in the early 1990s, I had decided out of the blue that I would knit a sweater. So I bought some squeaky acrylic yarn and a pair of needles. I have no memory of the actual knitting. Perhaps I got someone to cast on for me and I whaled away in garter stitch or something. Maybe I didn't even get that far. I remember I showed Hilda my work and she politely suggested that she could take it and get it started properly for me. So I handed the bag over to her and a short time later she was measuring me for sleeves and the next thing I knew I had a beautiful, almost indestructible, pink acrylic sweater. I still wear it sometimes when I am cold and I feel like I need a warm hug.


Hilda had embellished the sweater in a contrasting design, contributing yarn from her own stash to complete it, since I, apparently, hadn't bought enough of the squeaky pink stuff to make a whole sweater. The work is impeccable, like everything she did, the seams meticulously finished. And the design, like a bar chart, is brilliant, a timeless pattern that doesn't scream fin-de-siecle excess the way many sweaters of the era did.

I love my sweater. I loved my mother-in-law.

I am going to miss her.