Patchwork of memories

There's nothing like a hospital to wipe the smile off your face. You pass through lobbies straight out of Dante that teem with people in a maze of pain, praying for help, alone in a sea of strangers.

They're the ones we try to avoid in our daily lives: the old, rheumy - eyed, riddled with existential panic; the people on walkers covered with liver spots; the ones with tubes snaking up their nostrils.

You walk the halls and are swept into the slipstream of the crowd. Doctors sail by like frigates, the tails of their hospital whites flapping in their wake. Nurses just out of surgery sip coffee, paper caps still on their heads. The hospital suits head for yet another Power Point presentation. Eye contact is just not part of the program.

I always peel off for my own sanity, such as it is, and lay low. At the Massachusetts General Hospital, I'll head for the chapel or maybe those horrid metal seats in the lobby of the Founders House and monitor the traffic on Storrow Drive.

Last week, I glimpsed some quilts hung along the left wall of the corridor linking the main part of the hospital with the Founders House. I caught names all over the fabric out of the corner of my eye. There were a few photos of children too, so I assumed they were young success stories who got well thanks to the care they received from the MGH.

Wrong. These were kids who died there.

Once I grasped what was going on, I couldn't take my eyes off the quilts, and I returned after my doctor's appointment to embrace them. They go up every year, it turns out, before an annual service held on the first Sunday in November in the MGH to honor all the little souls and their families. What a fine idea.

There were five quilts made from 1998 to 2002. The MGH stopped making them because of a shortage of wall space and storage problems. Nuts. I say, make more quilts, and find the space. These mementos have been pasted into scrapbooks, and are seen only by the people who show up for the service each year. They deserve a wider audience.

Each family sent a piece of fabric with a message on it that the hospital sewed onto the quilts. They vary wildly in design, but share a simplicity that breaks your heart. There are predictable themes -- angels primarily -- that transcend cliché.

I remember Benjamin Layn Saulnier, 1-7-93 - 1-9-93. He's got a teddy bear leaning against a blue B.

I remember "In Memory of Zen -- born and died June 13, 1996" with a picture of a sleeping Bambi.

I remember the blue heart and booties for William Christopher Long and the pink ones for Angela Lee Long -- 2-10-02.

I remember "Thirty and Three Days -- Jasmin -- 3-4-98 -- 4-6-98. You live in our hearts forever. Heaven was missing an angel."

I remember "Some people only dream of angels. We had one in our arms. Angel. February 22, 1998."

I remember "A person is a person, no matter how small. Allen Thomas. August 29, 1999."

Most of these little guys never knew what hit them. The best medical care in the world couldn't save them. This dismantles me. I absorb their afterglow as Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" pours through my head, and I mourn them.

Some were teenagers. Nick, "our shooting star," lived from 1986 to 2000. Others didn't make it that far. Gabriel Alderman Farren, a great-looking kid with a killer smile, lived from 1985 to 1994.

I watch others glance at the quilts as they stride by. Some do a double-take and stop, as I did, pivot and come in close. They peer at the words and numbers, still unclear what they're seeing.

Then, suddenly, it dawns on them. There is an intake of breath. "Oh, dear God, that's so sad," says one woman, her hand over her mouth. "Oh, my God."

"Parents should't have to bury their children," says another to herself.

But they do, and the MGH decided 15 years ago to hold an annual service memorializing life and loss. Next Sunday, Ron Kleinman , chief of pediatrics, will speak along with Howard Weinstein, chief of pediatric oncology. Pediatric Chaplain Ann Haywood-Baxter will preside, and Fredda Zuckerman, the licensed social worker who has arranged these affairs, will moderate.

There will be, as always, the naming ceremony, where parents come to the podium to say their child's name out loud, and the slide presentation, too. Parents can bring two photos of their child -- maybe a picture of a footprint for a stillbirth, says Zuckerman. The fabric they decorated in the memory of their child is entered into the scrapbooks.

Credit the MGH for making the quilts. The idea was inspired, and it's time to start again. The quilts are not morbid. They're powerful reminders of the irredeemable sadness in the loss of a child. We forget that death can also come at an early age.

"Most people in the hospital don't want to advertise death," says Zuckerman. "But people die in your hospital and people should recognize this." She's right.

So I'll remember Darvin Chicas Jr: "Tu familia y amigos te recordamos." Amen.

Sam Allis's email address is allis@globe.com