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I could tell by the look on Ben's face that he was confused by my giving up, with nothing to show for all my time.

Many times during the months he was sick, I thought about asking my husband, Rich, what he would want on his panel for the AIDS quilt. But I never found a way. More than a year after his death, I began working on a project that I thought would feel safe and familiar, that would help me begin my healing. Sewing and quilting had been part of my life for years, and I looked forward to creating a tangible memorial that would show the times before AIDS, before pain and ugliness overgrew so much of our lives. I wanted people to know about Rich's politics, and his humor, and his love for our son, Ben.

Several weeks after he died, in 1991, I donated all of Rich's clothing to a shelter for homeless men. All except his T-shirts. Those I meticulously folded into a large cardboard box that I put on the top shelf of my bedroom closet. Some of his shirts were so worn that they barely held together. Every one displayed a message - "Free Nelson Mandela," "Peace in a United Ireland," "US Out of El Salvador." Each was laden with memories: of demonstrations Rich participated in, articles he had written, political arguments we had had.

One evening the following winter, I cleared a large area to begin my work. I spread out the 3-by-6-foot piece of black fabric I planned to use for the background. (This size had been specified in the literature I received from the Names Project, the organization that sponsors the AIDS quilt. Only later did I learn the significance of the dimensions: Each quilt panel is the size of a grave site.) For the first time, I opened the box of T-shirts I had packed up so many months before. I smelled each one as I unfolded it, covering my nose and mouth with the fabric. Each time, I breathed in slowly, hoping to capture, one last time, something of the Rich I loved. Not the smells of his sickness and his dying, but the cucumber-celery smell of his sweat that had intoxicated me when we made love, years before. I felt cheated when I realized that every shirt smelled exactly the same. The floral-scented laundry detergent was unfamiliar. I wondered which of our friends had done these last loads of laundry for us.

For hours, on that day and in the weeks to come, I played with those T-shirts, along with photos, political buttons, and memorabilia of all sorts. I lined objects up with symmetry and precision, then scattered them randomly. I balanced splotches of brightly colored fabric and then added more-muted tones. I overlapped, rearranged, made sketches on graph paper. Nothing I did looked right. I hated every design I created.

One rainy afternoon, weeks later, I realized I was no closer to completing a quilt than when I'd unpacked Rich's T-shirts. Angry and frustrated, I refolded and repacked each one and put the box back on the top shelf of my closet. Months later, I went to see a display of a small portion of the AIDS quilt at a local university. Along with hundreds of other people, I wandered among the panels. Every few minutes I would hear a Kleenex being pulled from one of the many boxes placed throughout the room. Quiet sobs punctuated the silence. Once, a young man cried out loudly, unwilling or unable to modulate his grief.

Some of the panels were elaborate, stunning works of art. Others were almost childlike in their simplicity. I returned home that day knowing that I had to make a quilt panel for Rich.

This time, I took a completely different approach. I visualized colors and abstract forms. I drew shapes in peacock blue, indigo, violet, aqua, the colors I love. The black background made the colors vivid and alive. Inspired, I worked with renewed energy and excitement until I realized what should have been obvious: I was designing a quilt for myself. It was capturing my personality, my spirit. I knew, even if no one else would, that what I was looking at had nothing at all to do with Rich. The revelation and my total resignation came simultaneously: I would not make a quilt for Rich. Ever. That I didn't understand why made the decision no less immutable. AIDS had won, again.

Ben walked into the room just as I finished cleaning up. He looked surprised.

"Did you finish Iggy's quilt?" (Iggy was the name Ben had given Rich when he was a baby, just beginning to talk.)

"Nope."

"How come?"

"I don't know. I just couldn't figure out how to make it."

For months, Ben had seen me working. I could tell by the look on his face that my 5-year-old was confused by my giving up, with nothing to show for all my time. Without giving the question any thought, I asked Ben, "Do you want to make a quilt for Iggy?"

"Sure."

It was so easy for Ben.

"I want it to be mostly red." Red was Ben's favorite color.

"What do you want it to say?"

"Iggy was my dad. And say we used to play guitar together and Iggy would write silly songs about me. And I want it to have a picture of me and Ig together. And I want some stars and some moons and a giant zig-zag line, like lightning. Can we go to Pearl Art and get gold and silver paint? Or maybe they have glow-in-the-dark paint."

The next day we went shopping for Ben's supplies. When we got home, he was ready to begin work.

"I'll show you where to put my words. Make sure you write real light, so no one will see your letters after I paint over them, OK, Mom?"

Ben's bold, unself-conscious strokes with a large dripping paintbrush filled much of the center of the red cloth. He proudly painted "Iggy was my dad" in wonderfully garish gold paint. Without a word of discussion, he grabbed another brush and dipped it into the white paint. He surrounded his letters with large, randomly placed blobby dots.

Later that day, we sat down with our photo albums. With great seriousness, Ben turned page after page and then announced decisively, "I want this picture, and I want that one on my quilt."

We called a number of places until we found one that would copy our photos directly onto our fabric. Rainbow Visions, in Allston, normally transferred photos onto T-shirts in quantities of a dozen or more. But when I explained that we were making a panel for the AIDS quilt, the man did not hesitate. "Why don't you bring your stuff over right now."

Ben's questions were nonstop. He was fascinated by the machines and photographic equipment at the workshop.

"So how do you get the paint from the machine onto the T-shirt? And how do you do it so all the colors of wet paint don't smear all over the place? And, wait a minute, how did you get that picture on a shirt without taking it out of the magazine?"

One man spent nearly an hour with Ben answering his questions and demonstrating each gadget they encountered on their tour of the studio. We left with more copies of our photos than we needed and with Ben wearing a zebra T-shirt made from a picture in National Geographic that was still in the magazine.

Less than a week after he had begun, Ben's work was done. Unlike anything I had attempted, his quilt captured Rich's spirit. We took his panel to the local chapter of the Names Project. Ben looked proud, and he listened attentively as one of the volunteers explained what would happen next.

"Your panel will be packed up with several others and sent to California. There it will be photographed and given a number. That way, if you ever want to find out where it is, you can."

The woman paused for a moment and then wondered out loud: "You know, it's possible that you're the youngest or at least one of the youngest people to make a panel for the AIDS quilt."

Ben smiled.

Ben, of course, had no way to know what his making a quilt panel for Rich meant to me. This small boy, with a wave of a paint brush, effortlessly beat back a tyrannical demon I was powerless to move.

All these years later, I still am grateful.