My mother Monique sat down at this bench in 1996 and never really got up again. Mornings before the light came. Evenings long after it had gone.

“If one woman carries it for twenty years and still loves it, that is enough.”

She said that to me once, and she meant every word of it. When her hands could no longer keep up, I pulled up a stool beside her, and we worked side by side until the very end.

She is gone now, and after thirty years the workshop is closing. Every bag that leaves here carries a piece of her — her stitches, her patience, her hands.

This is the last sale. Letting them go is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I would rather they be carried than boxed away.

In memory of Monique.