The contradiction of grief in quilting stitches

I started to cry last night. The tears have come easily these past few months after both my grandparents passed away, but this instance came at a quick glance of a wholecloth quilt that I have on my bed. My grandmother made it for me as a quick "heading off to college" coverlet. I use it now every night on top of my duvet. 

I saw her hand quilting and just as quickly as my brain said, "wow, look at how even and tidy those stitches are," I thought of how I had noticed a decline in the evenness and tidiness of her quilting the past few years, and then that she's not here anymore. Cue the waterworks. 

I have come to realize there is a contradiction in grief: I want it gone, but I don't.

Part of me wants the pain I'm feeling to be done and over with. Because really, no one wants to be upset with tears streaming down their face after a glance at something seemingly innocuous. A line of even quilting stitches. A half eaten jar of handmade jam. A chunk of raw amethyst. A knit dishcloth. The lack of my clockwork weekly phone calls (now its only spammers). Anything that gives you a glimmer of a special memory. 

I read a line somewhere recently - grief is just love with nowhere to go. The person/thing that love belonged to is no longer there, but the love you feel is still going strong. It has nowhere to land. Nothing to latch itself onto and wrap its arms around and hold on. 

So if my grief is just love for her, unable to leave my body because she's no longer here to receive it, do I want it gone? No, I don't think so. I know my grief will become easier to live with, in time, and if that line is true, my love for her won't go away, nor do I want it to. I suppose grief and I will become old friends. 

So here I sit, crying as I write, all because of a quick glance at a few stitches of white thread. If anyone ever tells you quilts are "just blankets" give them a whack for me please. Especially the ones that your grandma gives you. Treasure the little glimmers; the little things that remind you of them. And if it makes you cry, remember that its because the love is still there, just missing its person.