Husband’s pride at wife’s stitching work

By Kath Gannaway
SEEING one of his wife’s beautifully crafted quilts raffled was a bitter sweet moment for Geoff Keets.
The quilt, which was started by his wife, Sonia, and completed by members of the Steels Creek Stitchers, was one of several prizes donated for the group’s Biggest Afternoon Tea for the Cancer Council held at Yarra Glen last week.
More than 100 people attended the event, which included a spectacular display of quilts, and raised more than $1200 for cancer research.
Mrs Keets, a member of the group and a passionate craftswoman, developed dementia when she was just 52.
Now, at 55 Mr Keets said she is chronically affected by the disease and is in a nursing home.
“I was very proud to see the work up there,” he said.
“Sonia loved being part of the Stitchers,” he said pointing to the group’s huge mural-style patchwork completed in 2000 as a team project.
“Sonia did the middle section.”
He said his wife loved being part of the friendly Steels Creek community and was the inaugural secretary of the garden club and treasurer for a time.
Mrs Keets is a young woman among many much older residents in the dementia section of the nursing home.
The diagnosis came as a shock and the disease progressed far too quickly.
Sonia no longer recognises her husband and it’s hard to imagine there could be any reprieve from the ongoing sense of loss.
In some small way the raffle result offered that.
Mr Keets was delighted that the farmyard design quilt was won by a fellow-stitcher Phyl Hinsch.
He was especially thrilled when Mrs Hinsch announced she had bought the ticket for her eight-year-old granddaughter, Nikki.
It’s a beautiful, happy work that Mrs Hinsch said her granddaughter will cherish.
And it has the possibility of bringing joy not only now but who knows for how many years and for how many people in the future.