In Memory

Twenty three years ago tomorrow my grandma died. It was just three days before my third birthday. I don't remember much about her, but my earliest memories are of her. My mom and the rest of the family did a wonderful job of bringing me up knowing what a wonderful person she was and how much she loved me. One of the last things she did was for me. The day she died she signed two birthday cards for me, one from her and grandpa and the other from her pet bird, Mario. She had also got me a book and had wrote a note in the inside cover for me. When Mom flew out to California to get the family and funeral together, she found those items on her desk in the room where she died. I still have both cards and the book.

I've noticed through the years the strange things that Mom, my uncle, and I have held on to just because they had some connection to Grandma. Mom keeps a ratty pair of brown knee socks in the back of her sock drawer, and a half done needlework of a clown hanging on her closet door. My uncle keeps a pillow that she embroidered on his sofa. I keep a an old torn t-shirt of hers hanging on a hook in my closet, and a coupon for 7cents off Lenders Bagels that expired in May of 1982 as a bookmark in one of my cookbooks. Mom keeps the socks because she had borrowed them and forgot to return them and the clown because one day she'll pick up where grandma left off. My uncle keeps the pillow around because she made it for him when he was a boy. I keep the shirt because I can remember her wearing it, I even wore it for a nightgown for a few years when I was little. I keep the coupon because it fell out of a cookbook of hers, if it was a good enough bookmark for her, it'll work for me too. The average person would probably see these things as junk, but to the keepers of these items, it's a bridge to someone that has long left this world, but never our hearts