WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND

When I was in junior high and high school I would usually spend one week during the summer at my grandparents' house.  Grandma and I talked and played games,  I read at least half a dozen books, and somewhere along the way I got bored.  My grandparents had lots of stuff.  They were collectors of stuff.  My grandma collected genuine red glass, ceramic dolls, old perfume bottles, spoons from the different states, and cups and saucers, just to name a few.  Grandpa had more manly things like trains and ships.

I remember Grandma catching me examining her treasures on my day of boredom and it turned into who will get this and who will get that.  There were some items in the house that Grandma had very specific intended destinations after she and Grandpa were gone.  I realized once we started down this road I wasn't all that comfortable with where we were headed.  The organ was to go to my uncle and this painting was to go to my aunt and this doll was to go to my mother because it has her name on it. Grandma turns it over and, sure enough, it shares my mother's name.  She takes my hand and we walk up to her bedroom and she shows me a picture of her as a little girl that hangs over her bed and says, "And this is going to you.  When you were a little girl you thought that it was you in the picture."  She then gave me the history of her picture.  Her family was poor and just getting the picture taken was something and grandma wasn't cooperating at all.  She wouldn't let go of her bottle.  The photographer had to take the picture with the bottle and then cut it out and superimpose a rose into her hand.  If you look closely you can see her fingers aren't actually touching the rose at all.

My grandma always knew how to speak to your soul.  I felt like she was telling me that day that she would leave each of her family with a part of herself, and even though our conversation began because an immature girl was bored, it ended with a teaching moment.  My grandma died a couple of years ago, but alzheimers took her many years before that.  It turns out that I have a couple of nice pieces of red glass and a copy of the original picture of her as a child.  Someone else in my family got the original picture.  For years, I got angry every time I looked at that copy.  Now I don't care about that picture; I just want my grandma back.