While digging through my mom’s jewelry box a few months ago, I discovered a gold starfish dangling on a dainty gold chain, and I immediately fell in love with it; I soon learned it was yours.

The necklace had belonged to you, the woman I adored visiting as a child and felt so special around. That necklace remained looped delicately around my neck as I had my senior photos taken and on many other significant moments since.

As I blossom into adulthood, soon enough, it’s interesting that most of my memories of you are connected to trinkets and accessories I still find throughout my days. Small things I remember seeing around your house when I would visit every spring break of my youth.

You loved sand dollars, the ocean, the sun, and honestly, anything that had to do with Florida: the state you resided in for the bulk of my childhood. A small panda made of painted seashells and googly eyes sits on my Christmas tree, an ornament that use to dangle on the branches of your tree.

Two weeks ago, I was looking for a hair tie I seemed to misplace; while searching, I discovered a small box that contained a broken ring paired with an identical bracelet. Placed in the center of each band was my birthstone, and I remember the Christmas you had gifted them to me. I wore these pieces with me everywhere until eventually, my youthful clumsiness resulted in the bracket that held the jewels in place to brake off. I had set it aside, in an attempt to fix it later, and must have forgotten.

Though I can no longer fix the jewelry, I have added a necklace with my birth flower and stone to my Christmas list this year, because even though it won’t be you gifting it to me, it will still feel like items you gave me eight years ago.

Four years ago, I moved houses, and while packing up drawers, I found two tennis bracelets I had picked out from your old box of jewelry. Three years later, I wore those bracelets to both my junior Homecoming and Prom. 

A small glass fish, colored dark blue and white, lives confidently on a shelf in my closet, another piece of memorabilia I have to remember you by. Though it has been years since we parted, my memories of you live on each and every day.

My biggest milestones as I grow seem to contain some reflection of you and the childhood I remember. Just as it seems, my memories of you dreadfully slip away as time grows further since we last met, the memories, in the form of your prized possessions, remind me of your constant presence in my past, present, and future. 

As I sang happy birthday to you on your 89th birthday, you announced your wish to everyone “I want to live a hundred more,” but then you whispered your true wish to me, “I want to be a little bit older.” Though your dream didn’t reign true, my memories of you will live on for all those years you wished for.