This is my story about My aunts Mary Lou, Ethel and Erlene

My mom died unexpectedly of a heart attack in June 2004, when I was only 40 years old, and she was only 64. It was a devastating loss for my dad, my brothers, me and our tight-knit extended family. My mom was always creating beautiful things for people, especially using embroidery. On the first Christmas without mom, her three sisters presented me with a beautiful, embroidered lap quilt that my mom had been working on when she died. They had finished it as a gift for me! What a labor of kindness and love for a heartbroken daughter. How they managed when they were also in mourning her loss I will never know, and I had no idea what they were up to. They gave me something wonderful to hug during the worst moments of that first difficult year and something to treasure and pass on to my own daughter.