Wrapped in 'comfort quilt,' family gives life to memories

With their dad sick from kidney cancer and nobody able to do anything to stop it, 9-year-old Adelaide Riedesel and her twin brother, Harrison, poured themselves into a life-affirming project to make a “comfort quilt” featuring squares boasting signatures of loved ones and celebrities.

Eric Riedesel was wrapped in their quilt when he died Saturday evening.

The twins and their 18-month-old sister, Lorelei, planned to surprise their dad with the quilt for his 48th birthday on Jan. 17. Fearing Eric might not live to see his birthday, his wife, Alyce Levy-Riedesel, let the kids present their dad with the quilt on Christmas morning.

“It was amazing,” Alyce says of the gift.

Eric did make it to his birthday, dying four days later in his Antioch home.

“He smiled, the first time he was able to smile in a long time, and he mouthed, ‘I love you,'” Alyce remembers. “My children and I were holding his hand when he took a deep breath, held it, took another deep breath — his last.”

Those memories, the quilt and Eric's passion for life weren't interred Wednesday alongside Eric's body at Willow Lawn Memorial Park in Vernon Hills. Keeping Eric's memory alive was a part of messages delivered by Rabbi Scott Looper of Congregation Or Shalom in Vernon Hills and the Rev. Robert A. Davis of the Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Libertyville during the memorial service at Chicago Jewish Funerals in Buffalo Grove.

“You still have two parents that love you with all of our hearts,” Alyce told their children during the funeral as Lorelei, her hair in pigtails, walked the chapel's aisles, sucking her pacifier and dragging a cloth teddy bear behind her.

The rabbi read statements from the older kids, who expressed love and admiration for their dad.

“I'm so proud of my dad,” wrote Adelaide, who added, “I told him we were going to be OK.”

“My dad helped us out a lot by teaching us how to deal with the toughest situations,” read part of Harrison's letter.

They have the comfort quilt, actually two quilts and enough squares for more, featuring autographs from a diverse cast that includes former President George H.W. Bush, Rainn Wilson of TV's “The Office,” Charlie Sheen, country star Shania Twain, Donny and Marie Osmond, Bill O'Reilly, Gloria Steinem, Michael Douglas, John Boehner, Shaquille O'Neal and dozens more.

“We rotated them so they would smell like him,” Alyce says of the quilts. Each family member also has a shirt Eric wore during his last days.

The “comfort quilt” effort continues and Alyce and the children still collect leads on celebrity signatures through her Alyce IsCurious Facebook page, her videos, her blog and her alyceiscurious@gmail.com email.

Recalling stories from Eric's parents, Ed and Suzanne Riedesel, and sister, Krista Biernath, Looper tells how a young Eric broke his arm falling from a tree he was forbidden to climb and kept his injury secret from his parents until the pain got too bad. Alyce says her husband stoically fought through the discomfort, pain, fatigue and sorrow of his final weeks to make a lasting gift for his children.

“Right now I'm watching my husband make videos congratulating our children for completing different life events such as graduating middle/high school/college/grad school/Ph.D., dating, getting married, having a baby, etc. …,” Alyce writes in her blog days before Eric dies. “There are sometimes tears of him not being able to be there. Sometimes claps of congratulations. Always a love in his eyes that they will watch more than the words that are coming out of his mouth. My husband's most commonly used phrase in all of his videos is, ‘I want you to be happy.'”

A technology manager for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Eric was a well-mannered, conservative Republican who grew up in a Christian home and fell in love with Alyce, a full-throttled, outspoken, liberal Democratic Jewish woman from New York. The rabbi recited the Mourner's Kaddish and the pastor read the 23rd Psalm at Eric's funeral.

The couple were approaching their 10th anniversary when Eric was diagnosed with an extremely rare, incurable type of kidney cancer shortly after Valentine's Day in 2011. He spent much of the next 11 months at home with his family. The family asks that memorial contributions be sent to the Kidney Cancer Association, 1234 Sherman Ave., Suite 201, Evanston, IL 60202.

While Alyce often vented her heartache and her anger in her blogs, she says the “comfort quilt” project taught her children that people, even strangers, often do everything they can to help people in need. That's a trait they also witnessed at home.

“Eric was loved because he put himself out there to help others,” Looper says.

Reading a letter that started out as a birthday poem to her husband, Alyce promises, “Our children and I will celebrate your next birthday, and all your birthdays after,” talk about him at supper every night and remember that “working hard and being proud of what you do should be part of your life.”

She says goodbye at the funeral with these words:

“I promise your legacy will live on in our three beautiful children. Each time they succeed I will thank you for helping me make that possible. I will remind our children that without you, their lives wouldn't be so glorious. I will allow my children to say, ‘Yes, my dad died physically, but he's in everything I do, so I guess that doesn't really make him dead.' This is the promise I make to you.”

Wednesday afternoon, as Eric's body was laid to rest, the family withstood the chill, huddled behind two “comfort quilts.”