See a Living Legacy in Action — Sample Memorial & Life Story Preservation

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Summer 1952 Childhood Memory

The Garden That Started Everything

Grandma Margaret always said her love of gardening began with a single tomato plant she grew from seed when she was ten years old. Her father, a dairy farmer in Middlebury, gave her a small patch of earth behind the barn and told her it was hers to do with whatever she liked.

She planted that tomato, watered it every morning before school, and kept a little notebook where she tracked its progress in the careful handwriting of a child who took her responsibilities seriously. When it finally produced its first red tomato in August, she carried it inside, sliced it at the kitchen table, and served it to her family with a sprinkle of salt. She remembered her father saying it was the best tomato he'd ever tasted.

"He probably said that to every tomato I ever grew," she'd tell us, laughing. "But I believed him every single time."

Prompted by: "What's your earliest memory of something you created or made with your hands?"

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Every October Family Tradition

Preserving Season

Every October without fail, Grandma Margaret would spend two full weeks in what the family called "preserving season." The kitchen would fill with the steam of boiling jars, the sharp sweetness of apple butter, the savory tang of pickled green beans, and the deep burgundy of beet relish.

She learned the recipes from her own grandmother, who had learned them during the Depression when preserving wasn't a tradition — it was survival. But Margaret transformed it into something else entirely: a ritual of abundance, of care, of love made tangible and jarred for the months ahead.

Each jar was labeled in her handwriting: "Thompson Family Apple Butter, 2018." "Vermont Dill Pickles for Daniel's birthday." The labels were as personal as letters. When she gave a jar away, it felt like receiving a piece of herself.

She taught all three of her daughters the process, and her granddaughter Claire still fills her pantry every fall, sometimes calling Grandma mid-boil to ask: "How do I know when the jam is ready?" The answer was always the same: "Put a spoonful on a cold plate. If it wrinkles when you touch it, you're done."

Prompted by: "What family tradition do you hope continues after you're gone?"

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Advice she lived by Life Lesson

"Don't Borrow Trouble"

Margaret had a saying she used so often that her children could finish it before she did: "Don't borrow trouble." It meant: don't spend today worrying about problems that haven't happened yet.

She'd developed this outlook, she said, after losing her first husband to a sudden illness at thirty-four. He'd been a worrier — a kind and thoughtful man who spent his evenings planning for contingencies, reviewing accounts, imagining setbacks. And then, quite suddenly, he was gone. All that worry had come to nothing. All that time spent in the future was time not spent in the present.

She remarried at forty-two — "older and considerably wiser," she'd say with a wink — and built a second life that she described as the best surprise of her existence. She'd stopped borrowing trouble and started lending her full attention to the day in front of her.

"The garden doesn't worry about frost in July," she once told her grandson Thomas, who was twelve and anxious about starting middle school. "It just grows." He said he thought about that sentence for years afterward.

Prompted by: "What's the most important piece of advice you'd give your grandchildren?"

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1971 – 2003 Career & Contribution

Thirty-Two Years at the Fabric Counter

Margaret worked at Patterson's Dry Goods on Church Street in Burlington for thirty-two years — first as a clerk, eventually as the store's unofficial fabric specialist. She was the person people came to when they had no idea what they were doing but needed something made.

She helped a nervous father pick fabric for his daughter's first Halloween costume. She guided a bride who wanted to sew her own veil but had never threaded a needle. She talked a grieving widower through making a quilt from his late wife's housedresses. She didn't advertise these services. She simply paid attention to people and offered what she knew.

When Patterson's closed in 2003 — another downtown casualty of the big-box era — Margaret attended the closing party and cried, which surprised people who didn't know her well. Those who did understood completely. That store was where she'd spent the working years of her adult life, quietly making things possible for other people.

She kept a small box of fabric swatches from her favorite bolts. They were found in her dresser drawer after she passed. Nobody could bear to throw them away.

Prompted by: "What work in your life are you most proud of?"

Margaret Eleanor Thompson

The Garden That Started Everything

Preserving Season

"Don't Borrow Trouble"

Thirty-Two Years at the Fabric Counter

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