or The Questions We Leave Behind

A bronze pendant featuring a miniature basketball player mid-shot, the words “all tourney” raised in all caps across a banner framed with olive branches.

A 3D basketball charm, gritty in places with green tarnish, like tiny barnacles distorting the rounded surface.

An ornate tie tack, the kind with the little chain that hangs across the tie, adorned by a small ivory plaque, slightly yellowed, with a silver C prominently centered.

All tucked into a blue coin purse speckled with age and what could be mold.

Inside a plastic bag of campaign buttons from elections long since won and lost.

Nestled in a cabinet, hidden from view, overlooked in searches for things of value. Forgotten.

Then.

Found.

Holding them, I can’t help but wonder, what feats of speed and strength, what measure of persistence merited an “all tourney” recognition? How many years did it take to turn that shiny little orb of a basketball to the state that it was initially mistaken as an old musket round? Who was “C” and was he the only “C” to display his initials so clearly over his tie? Did he buy it for himself, was it a gift? Maybe from a wife to her husband or from a father to his son?

What story do these items tell? What memories do they hold?

None I can share. You see, the stories of some things are taken to the grave with their owners never to be told again. Others are lost to the ravages of age or injury forgotten even by the one who experienced them.

Oh sweet friends, would that I could hear those stories told again by the ones who lived them! What a tender mercy to watch the joy of yesteryear dance in the eye of the teller one more time, to have my ears tickled by the deep laugh that shook his whole body and sometimes the couch too, to see her slender fingers light on his arm and soak in the amusement of her tone as she added a more objective detail to his tendency for hyperbole!

Dear heart, God’s word tells us clearly that for everything there is a season, but why must seasons we wish to pass quickly linger so long and why must seasons we wish to be longer feel so short? Why must some summers slam straight into winter with no hint of autumn to signal to us that the days are growing shorter, that the light is running out? Why must we be caught unawares, left only with the stories we know, discovering that what we know was but a fraction of a life, that there is much we did not know, cannot make sense of without the one whose life gives meaning to the telling.

As I ponder these difficult questions, I can’t help but also wonder, what story will the items I leave behind tell? What loved one will find a piece of jewelry or an old award hidden among seemingly worthless items? What will they remember as they hold it? What will they long to hear or see one more time? Did I leave them abruptly with more questions than answers, with regrets and doubts? Or did I live and love openly enough to leave them without questions, to free them from the weight of doubt or regret?