the experience of my grandmother talking to me from beyond the grave

My grandmother was an amazing woman.  She was Einstein smart, had eight children, 20+ grandchildren, survived her husband by almost 15 years, and volunteered right up until her dying days.  Retirement didn't slow her down.  If anything, it sped her up.  The family joke was "where's Grandma now?", because she was always traveling.

Even though she had so many kids and grandkids, she managed to remember everyone's birthdays and anniversaries.  She remembered your likes and dislikes, your strengths and weaknesses, and she shared inside jokes with everybody.  In short: she had a way of making everybody feel equally special and loved.  I remember when I had my tonsils removed.  She called me the day before, to "say goodbye" to them.

When she died this past summer, I helped go through her bedroom and sort out her stuff.  It turns out my grandmother had a filing cabinet, and each child, child-in-law, grandchild, and grandchild-in-law had a file.  We think they contained things that either reminded her of that person, or things that she wanted to eventually give to that person.

Things were so hectic when she died, and it is only now, eight months later, that my file has been mailed to me and I've been able to see what's in it.  It's a bizarre, interesting collection of things.  There's a picture of her, and of my late grandfather (whom I never knew well enough to call "Grandpa").  There's a dateless journal, half filled, from when they went traveling in Europe.  There are some newspaper clippings on how to succeed, from the 1960s.  There's a newspaper clipping about the heartache of a mother watching her daughter grow up.  And there's the playbill to one of my High School plays.  Among other, lesser things (like business cards, and a Christmas card I gave her when I was 16).

It was such a nice surprise to come home today and find it in my mailbox.  But it's also kind of like a mystery.  What was Grandma saying?  Why did she put what she did into my file?  What about them made her think of me?  Some of these answers are obvious, some of them I've got no idea.   Or, maybe my file was close to empty and my aunts lovingly filled it with stuff.