It’s been almost five years since I lost my son Jesse but it has in truth simply been one long unending day. I’ve tried everything including denial but it doesn’t get better and sometimes, actually most times, it truly gets even worse. Folks don’t like to hear, think or believe that but to them I can only say “You never had a kid like mine.”

Today was a Fortunate Friday – I spent time with two of Jesse’s friends, two who will never forget, two who willingly accept me for what and who I am now. Two who will never expect me to “get better.”

Never forget.

Society loves to place limits as though grief and love are processes, steps to recovery, like I am some kind of addict or displaced person who needs to be set straight. I ain’t straight, I ain’t gonna be straight and as I told my poor, distraught, heart-breakingly incapable of diagnostic reparation grief counselor: “The only way you can ever really help your clients is if you might pick up that telephone, dial a magic number and tell us that wherever our kids are now, that they are safe and happy and we’ll see them soon.”

She couldn’t, so I left, never to return again.

There are no magic phone numbers, no magic pills. But when I stop crying again, I’ll go back to stitching. Or to the Dunbar Memorial Garden. Or to those people who like my companions today, will never ever ask me “How are you doing?” because they already know the answer.

Yesterday I crocheted, today I cry. Tomorrow may or may not come for many so I’ll close with Hannah, Jesse’s beautiful friend who I will never forget either. Because she didn’t forget the friends she’d lost, I will always remember you.

Purple for Hannah. Go look up her name. Hannah Landers. <3

Hannah Landers and a purple bunny <3

A portion of the profits from any thing purple sold in my Etsy shop will go to the Hannah Landers Scholarship Fund.

Visit, learn, cry, remember.

I contributed several squares in honor and memory of young ones who are no longer with us but who were actively involved in creating unity and celebrating diversity. My son Jesse was a member of Dunbar High Schools Gay-Straight Alliance as was his friend Hannah and her friend Josh. Creating each square was an emotional process but I was glad to contribute knowing that their names would continue to be spoken and their stories told.

For Jesse’s square I was compelled to take up knitting – I wanted to stitch his name in Binary and couldn’t find a way to do it by crocheting. Jesse loved coding and programming and was a true tech genius from an early age. The penguin represents “Tux” – the Linux icon. The brown is for his beloved Bear Monster Hoodie (from the web comic “Questionable Content“) that he wore to school almost every day no matter the weather. The yellow stitching of his name is the color most of his friends associate as “Jesse’s color” – we use it on the website and in our Trust logo.

Jesse's square

For his friend Hannah, I used yarn from her personal knitting basket that was given to me by her mom.

Hannah's Square

I didn’t know Josh but the entire Dunbar Memorial Garden concept was created in response to his suicide. I used Hannah’s yarn again – because he was her friend, and I let Hannah guide my hands as all of my ideas for the piece never seemed to work out right.

Josh's square

I thought I was finished crocheting and crying but then after learning of the suicide of  Jamie Hubley, another young person exposed to intolerance and anti-gay sentiment, I picked up my crochet hook again. Jamie’s blog stated that when he left this earth he wanted to be a unicorn. So I made him one.

Jamie's Square

While the blanket project is in the assembly stage, I hope like me, you will be compelled emotionally and physically to be an active advocate for acceptance, tolerance, diversity and unity. Jesse was. <3

For the sake of impartiality, this post is dedicated to showing how to add a bead directly into your stitchery. First get your tools together: your current crochet project in progress, an extra tiny crochet hook (or other implement that will fit through your chosen bead) and collect your wits about you.

I’ve chosen a crochet in the round project that’s done in single crochet using a G hook. I also picked an “H” bead that I found among my collection. The tiny silver crochet hook is a “US5/1.7 MM” – it’s got a really small hook and can easily slide through most of my beads.

To stitch the bead into your work, pull your current crochet loop out until it’s long enough to accommodate the size of your bead. The thing is, if your bead has a big enough hole in its middle you can actually just shove the loop through the bead – in this instance, the H bead has a small hole so I have to use the tiny 5 hook.

Here’s how I did it:

Had I used one of the larger beads with the bigger hole, I could have simply twisted the yarn with my fingers and pushed the loop through. Alas, I always make things harder than they need to be.

Once you’ve pulled the loop through your bead, you can go back to using whatever size hook you were crocheting with, in my case it is the beloved G hook.

The next step simply involves making your next stitch – since my project is a single crochet, I poked my hook through the next stitch in my row and went at it.

Now, that was easy wasn’t it?

And here’s what my project looked like after a few more stitches:

Once you grasp the concept (hopefully you’ll be quicker than me, because it took me hours of scouring the internet to figure out how to do this) you can use this method to securely attach any item with a hole in it into your stitching frenzies. Like yesterdays’ R0cktapuss – his tentacles could have beads stitched in. This is particularly funktastic when you crochet in the round and add beads as “eyes” for your creatures, creations or Amigurumi dollz.

P.S. I chose the H for Hannah and for Jesse Higginbotham. Love you both, miss you madly <3 </3