We turned the corner to drive down grandma’s driveway, and I took a deep breath. We were there to help clean out her bedroom. To go through her pieces of clothing and to toss them into bags, discarding one piece of her until all the drawers are empty and closest was bare.
Grandma’s room was hers. We didn’t go through her things, except for the box that sat in the back of her closet when I was a kid full of dress up clothes. Now I sat on a bench opening one drawer after another, inspecting, grabbing, placing, moving on.
We moved to the kitchen. Started going through the drawers, discarding long expired food, until we reached the drawer that held the phone books.
I sat watching Beth go through each item in the drawer. A phone book. A church directory. Paper. Calendars. And my eyes spied a piece of wood, square, with writing and a drawing.
Here in this drawer of “new” things, important things, the top most drawer under the phone, where you put things that you wanted handy was that piece of wood. A piece of wood that was 45 years old. A piece of wood that was worth literally nothing, could have been easily overlooked and tossed into the fireplace to keep the house warm.
I asked Beth if I could have the piece of wood. She asked if I knew what it was. I just shook my head.
I got up and put the wood next to my purse and sat next to my husband on the couch and couldn’t hold back the tears that rolled down my face.
She’s really gone. She’s not coming home, back, here, ever. Never ever. I was so blessed to have her as my grandmother. Blessed enough to have her put a piece of wood in the top drawer of the kitchen that I drew on when I was 7 telling her I loved her. I loved her. She loved me. She was one of the best things I had in my life. And the world is a little less blessed without her in it.
