As 2023 came to an end it became increasingly clear that my 80 year-old father-in-law was changing. He starting getting lost coming home from the store just two blocks from the house he had lived in for more than 45 years. For decades he had spent several nights a week volunteering for different organizations, and suddenly he stopped leaving the house. Once a fastidious, financially responsible person, he stopped paying bills. At the beginning of 2024 he was officially diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimer’s.

Shortly after my father-in-law’s diagnosis, my husband took over his parents finances. That was when my husband discovered that his father had been hiding an extensive gambling addiction, possibly fueled by dementia. Our family soon uncovered boxes of spent scratch-off lottery tickets, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of the money my father-in-law so carefully saved to care for himself and his wife in their final years is gone.

Not long after that my own father unexpectedly died. My father had been squatting in a remote cabin without running water for decades, where he died from cold exposure.

These two back-to-back family tragedies compelled me to wonder what, if anything, my husband and I would be leaving our own children. My question mirrors a question that mothers all over the world ask themselves - What do mothers leave behind? Traditionally speaking, much of what mothers leave their children is that which they make with their own hands - tapestries, embroideries, and quilts made from the remnants of the lives they lived or the wealth that they had gathered along the way. The only physical remnants of gained generational wealth that I have to offer are used lottery tickets.

So, I started making these quilts as heirloom pieces for my next generation. But, they also have a deeper, broader significance. One that questions what our capitalist society is leaving as legacy, not to mention how our society overlooks state sanctioned institutions that prey on the vulnerable. This quilt, God’s Eye (Max the Money), is constructed of approximately 32 $30.00 Ohio Lottery Tickets (totaling $960.00). It’s traditional God’s Eye quilt design symbolizes the power of seeing and understanding that which is hidden.