rings

So my maternal grandfather has a way of telling stories.  He's not a sentimental person in the least, yet he does incredibly sentimental things and then hides them in the telling of a story.  Like the time he was halfway through a story before I realized he was telling me the story of how he'd just bought me a sewing machine (something I'd wanted for a while).

This happened again a couple of weekends ago.  When talking about my upcoming wedding he casually mentioned that he had mailed me my (dead) grandmother's rings.  Her wedding rings.  Along with the watch that I don't think she took off her wrist since before I was born.  I'd never asked him for these, we'd never spoken about this before.  This wonderful, unsentimental 96 year old man just decided that mailing his only granddaughter his wife's rings was the right thing to do.

And the package arrived tonight.  My mother had mailed it for him, along with two of Jim's blue shirts.

Oh my lord.  I didn't think it was possible for me to still get this emotional.  As my uncle once said, there aren't enough tissues in the world. 

(I have plans for Jim's blue shirts.  They will be playing a very important, albeit personal and symbolic, part in my wedding.)