Monday, March 22, 1999
She pieced together quilt of love
Dylan Borgman
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Lynn Borgman
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Lynn Goodwin Borgman — entrepreneur, quilter, mother, and oft-times the real-life inspiration for husband Jim Borgman's cartoons in The Enquirer — died Feb. 3 at age 44 of an apparent pulmonary embolism. Today, we share a eulogy, edited-for-newspaper format, written by Lynn and Jim's 16-year-old son, Dylan.
My mother loved fabric.
I never really knew why that was until I saw her in her studio one day, completely engulfed in her work. She was singing and dancing and sewing all at the same time.
I knew then she loved her fabric, because fabric was part of her soul.
For everyone there is such a medium. It may be a food, an art, a song or a place, but it is the physical manifestation of the soul. I don't think many people recognize their soul medium, but she knew — and she surrounded herself with it, which is what made her special.
If you looked in her studio you'd see colors and patterns covering walls up to the ceiling. In a way, her fabric was not unlike herself. Every single part of her was bright, expressive, inviting.
Each piece of fabric she owned cried out for its own special treatment, and most of the time, it was all I could do to stand there and take it all in.
Fabric of life
She used to say that she never quite knew what she was going to do with all her fabric, but she knew it was going to be used for something. I know now what that something is.
I always smiled when she'd say she was a quilter, because she was more of an experimenter. Quilting was too slow. Her mind was so full she rarely had time to finish a quilt before going on to something else.
Of course, she and I knew that if she had 10 lives, she could never use up all of her fabric.
But now, I can see that even when she was not sewing or buying fabric, she was hard at work making a bigger quilt. I can see her final masterpiece in its entirety. She made every one of us into a piece of her quilt.
When you look at her fabric, you see its texture, its color, its individual beauty. Some pieces are large, some small, some are geometric and some are irregular. Every one is a part of her mind and body.
My piece reminds me of her brightness, her beauty and her grace. I will hang it above my bed and it will protect me in my darkest hours. If we are ever sad, we can look at a piece and remember we have a gateway into her soul.
Love still unfolding
As we go back to our lives, one might think her final quilt has been shattered. There is nothing farther from the truth. By talking about her, sharing stories and grief, we sew each piece of fabric together.
So the quilt will not be destroyed but unfolded, revealing its beauty. It will reach from as far west as California to as far east as New Jersey, from as far north as Alaska to as far south as Florida, it will continue to stretch to Europe and Africa.
Anywhere we go, we cover more of the world with her love.
Each piece of her quilt is beautiful in its own way, but only when it is seen from above, will the true beauty be seen. I hope that wherever she is now, she can look down and finally know what her quest in life was.
Her quilt will be with us always. With what she has given us in her short-lived existence on this earth, we can warm the world when it is cold.
Dylan Borgman, 16, lives in Hartwell and is a sophomore at Walnut Hills High School. Pieces of his mother's quilt fabric were distributed at her memorial service.
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