[a moment] can be worth everything

[moment 141]

She talks about the inevitable - when the remnants of her life will be auctioned, sold, or thrown away; when the house her husband built will be torn down to make room for something new for a total stranger. She speaks of all the possessions she will leave behind.

What she can't possibly get a firm grasp on are the memories, the joys, the love that is her legacy. She will leave behind children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who carry pieces of her within them, and who will pass on her memory through stories and traditions and the living out of the most precious pieces of the gift that has always, simply, been her. 

I wasn't born into this family, but feel as if I spent part of my childhood right alongside her grandchildren, fishing from her pier, because of all the vivid tales of fishing and crabbing and summer days spent at Pop and Grandma Jean's that I've heard from my husband's Maryland family. 

We recently got to pay a short visit to GG, and although our visit lasted only a few hours, decades of memories flooded in at every sight and sound. It had been ten years since our last visit - much too long - our summer vacations shifting from Vacation Bible School in Pennsylvania and fishing at Pop and GG's to Lutheran Summer Camp in New Hampshire for our children and ourselves. Ten years, yet our children remember so much about our time spent in Maryland - the sandbox, the swing, Pop's pigeons, the hammock, the duck protecting her nest that one year. They recall trips to Baltimore to go to the Science Center and Aquarium and coming back "home" afterwards to empty the crab traps and eat a dinner of crabs, spread out on newspapers on the dining table, the scent of Old Bay sticking to our fingers even after a good washing.

She talks about the inevitable - about things of value, of worth... but invaluable are the memories and love that are her legacy.