Saying Good-bye is painful

What made saying good-bye to this dress so difficult is that my mother made it. She was only 43 and I was probably 15 when I checked on her progress each day after school.  I still have an apron she made for me 50 years ago from a skirt she made for me in high school!  I still have the formal she made for me for the Christmas Dance of 1955. I still have the cloth doll she made for me in elementary school and the doll clothes she sewed and gave me at Christmas in the 1940s. I have pillows at our cottage she made in 1990.  So giving up this dress which I watched her cut out on our dining room table with trembling hands (she was a self taught seamstress) was BIG.  But yesterday it went to the Discovery Shop, which sells clothes and household items to raise funds for cancer. There are no women in the family to pass it to. I had heard that Vineyard Church had a bridal ministry, but when I called, I was told there was someone who had a ministry in Brazil that would take it.

Ready to take it to Discovery

Hanging in the sorting room

One last time

Our wedding day, September 1960

At our 50th party in Columbus in September 2010