What a loving and touching story. What is that saying...as long as we have memories no one is truly gone? And how comforting to have something to 'touch' from the past that was a part of so many lives.

My husband's grandmother (we lost her two years ago...she was 94)...always sat in an old burnt orange high-back chair. She sat in that chair and told me stories of her childhood, played her fiddle and guitar, and watched her soaps from that chair. She collapsed suddenly one afternoon and died a week later. No one wanted her chair because just before her collapse she had vomited on the arm and needed cleaning. Out of all her possession when I saw that chair, I thought of her. When I found out it was going to be put on the curb, I asked my husband if he'd mind bringing it home and that I'd clean it up. He did and I cleaned her chair until it looked new again. It now sits in my living room and is where I like sitting when I do my needlework and watch my soap.

Hopefully, we'll all leave something behind that someone will find value in to remind them of us. Whether it be a broken old chest or a chair with sick stains on it. They serve as testimony that we did exist and that we were a part of our families lives. Memories, we'll always have them, but to be able to touch something that belonged to a loved one, no matter how tattered or torn, gives us something that has remained when the physical part of the one we love has left us forever.