Both my parents had died in the autumn, and every fall I felt melancholy. This day—one week after the anniversary of my mom’s death, 11 years earlier—I sat on the porch, missing her even more than usual.
A widow for two decades, Mom devoted herself to her family—my younger brother, Bill, her three grandchildren and me. We saw each other every day and enjoyed going to flea markets together. “I’m praying for you,” she liked to say. “I’m asking God to watch over you.”
One Christmas, my brother bought her a gold-tone locket. He had her initials engraved on the outside, HRS for Helen Ruth Summers. We tucked photos of the grandkids inside: Bill’s sons on the left, my daughter on the right. Mom loved that locket. But after she died, we couldn’t find it anywhere. I came to accept that somehow it had been lost with Mom.
I heard footsteps. It was my brother. “I was just at a flea market,” he said. “I got you a gift.” He handed me a small box.
Bill owned a space at an antique mart and was always on the lookout for a bargain. For me, shopping wasn’t the same without Mom. I hadn’t been to a flea market since she died.
I opened the box. Inside was a locket, its gold color faded. The initials HRS were engraved on the front. “Mom’s locket! How on earth did you find it?”
“I was sifting through one seller’s items when the light reflected off something shiny,” Bill said. “It was the locket with Mom’s monogram. I opened it and there were the photos of our kids, still in there. When I told the guy it had been Mom’s, he wouldn’t take a penny for it.”
I lifted the locket out of the box, marveling at how many hands it must have passed through over the past 11 years. God had kept watch over it as carefully as he watched over us, just the way Mom asked him to.
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