I saw the moving van parked in front of the house across the street and knew it wasn’t a good sign. Molly had lived in that house 50 years until she became ill and her family placed her in a nursing home. The moving van meant she wasn’t coming home.
I walked across the street to talk to her son, Fred. We’d only met a couple of times, but he’d seemed like a nice person.
I asked him how Molly was doing, and I already dreaded the answer.
“Mom doesn’t have much time left,” he said. “They are making her as comfortable as possible at the home. I’m cleaning out the house. I’ve donated most of furniture to a charity, and they’ll be here this afternoon to pick it up,” he said, and closed the doors on the moving van. “I’m finished here except for hauling a couple of boxes to the trash. You know Mom; she saved bits and pieces of everything. This box has years of canceled checks and five-year-old phone bills. ”
“I guess the older we get, the more things we save,” I said, and picked up a cardboard box to help Fred carry some things to the trash. “This box is full of used wrapping paper and old ribbons.”
Suddenly I realized I was holding the happiest moments of Molly’s life in my arms.
“Fred, could I please have this box of wrapping paper?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, and shook his head. “I doubt there is anything in there worth saving.”
I spent the rest of the day going through the box of old, wrinkled, gift-wrapping paper. Most of it was from Christmas gifts, but there was also paper from birthdays and some from anniversaries and Mother’s Day. Molly had saved paper from gifts given to her for the last 30 or 40 years or longer. The gifts were long gone, used up, worn out, lost or forgotten, but the pretty paper that they’d been wrapped in had been saved in a box.
I carefully ironed the paper and ribbons and cut them into squares that would fit into the pages of a loose-leaf binder with the clear plastic sleeves. There were 80 pages of wrapping paper with Christmas trees and snowmen, birthday greetings and some with flowers. All the paper meant someone had loved Molly enough to buy a gift, wrap it and give it to her to tell her she was loved.
The next day I drove to the nursing home to visit Molly. I told her I’d seen her son, Fred, and that he’d been kind enough to let me have something special.
When I handed her the scrapbook with all the pages of gift paper, she recognized the paper immediately and broke into tears.
“All my happiest memories!” she said.
One by one she turned the pages and told me what gift had been wrapped in each piece of paper.
“When Fred was 12, he gave me a crystal swan that was wrapped in this blue paper with the daisies on it. It was my Mother’s Day gift. This paper with the snowmen on it was wrapped around a box of cherry chocolates my sister gave me for Christmas when I was 15; she’d already eaten half of them and said Santa must have eaten them. This pink paper was wrapped around a box that held a beautiful watch my husband gave me for our 25th wedding anniversary,” Molly would smile and turn a page. Then, sometimes she’d laugh, and sometimes she’d shed some tears. “You’ve given me back my happiest times, my best memories.”
I visited Molly several times over the next few months, and every time I was there she’d take out the scrapbook and tell me the stories again about each piece of paper and ribbon. When she passed away Fred returned the album to me and thanked me for giving it to his mother. He said it was her most treasured possession, and she’d asked him to make sure I got it when she was gone.
I keep it on my bookshelf and sometimes I look through it and share Molly’s happiest thoughts again.
We need “big” things in our lives, like a house and a car, a sofa, a bed, a table but our happiest memories are about little things. Our most treasured keepsakes are bits and pieces, photos, cards, letters, things that could be put into a single scrapbook, things that could be held in the palm of our hand, things we hold in our hearts. Relish the little bits and moments for they, too, are blessings from God to remind us of His goodness.
Crying Wind is the author of Crying Wind, My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced and Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins, Stars in the Desert.
