Fun Mondays Treasure

We bought three "Grandmother Remembers" books for Christmas 1983. One for my mother, one for the hubby's Gram, and one for his mother.

Eighty-one year old Gram spent the next year working tirelessly filling every page. She even wrote and pasted pictures in the table of contents.

In the excitement of wrapping it for the hubby and placing it under the next years Christmas Tree, she could barely contain herself. When he opened it and began to leaf through her memories, she wiggled, giggled, smiled, and cried until all her wrinkles were filled with tears.

She passed away in 1997 at the age of 95. I'll be writing about her soon.

My mom died in 1993. We found the partially completed remembrance in a book shelf in her house. She worked on it slowly and thoughtfully. I guess I'm a lot like her in that I set things aside with the intention to get back to it soon. Although I look at the empty pages with some regret, the ones she completed are real to me. On them I sense her loving thoughts, the fragrance of her hand lotion, and the wear on each corner made by her work-roughened hands.

The third book is a sad story. I didn't take a picture because it is empty. The hubby's mom refused the opportunity to write her story. Perhaps someday we can come to terms with an empty book that signified an empty life that ended in 2003. My husband is a wonderful man, and for that reason alone I never dishonored her. Unfortunately, the unmarked pages do not deny the marks that were left on the minds and souls of her two children.

So todays treasure is in fact the love of two amazing women who filled our lives with blessings.

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