A Doll Called Regret Gets a New Name

I mentioned before how this past month has been rather sad.

At the beginning of March,

I learned that my grandmother had taken a turn for the worse.

I'd known for about six months or so that she had cancer.

Unfortunately, the time had come for us to go say goodbye to her.

When I was a little girl, I thought my grandmother was the greatest person in the world.

Unfortunately, I never was able to have the relationship with her that I dreamed of...

or really, any relationship with her at all (this was not by my choice).

Hearing that I had to go say goodbye to her was really difficult for me.

I guess there's always been a little girl locked away inside,

hoping that one day things would magically change.

My first response was one that I'm sure many of you can relate to...

I threw myself into crafting in order to work through my feelings.

That is how Regret came to be.

I worked on her almost nonstop and filled her with all my regrets.

I shed quite a few tears as I stitched her together.

When the time came to paint her face, my first thought was to make her sad.

She had other plans...

As I was working on her face, the lyrics to the song "Smile" came to mind

(which was odd...I hadn't heard that song in forever!)

"Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You'll get by...
If you smile."

I realized something very important while working on Regret.

While my grandmother and I were never able to have the relationship I had dreamed of, she did have a major influence on me.

She was the one that really inspired me to create things like dolls in the first place.

I may not have had many memories with my grandmother,

but the ones I do have are all happy.

As I made the final touches on Regret, she requested I give her a new name...

And that is how the doll called Regret became known as Memory.

Funny what one can learn from a little doll, huh?

In Loving Memory :)