Essence

     I often hold on to momentos too long thinking they will hold the memory of someone in my life. The longer I hold on to that thing the less it contains the memory of it's former owner and the more it becomes just a thing. My aunt had lived in my grandmother's house for years after my grandmother had passed away . For a long time I felt her presence there and would think that my grandmother would join us in the family room at any minute. After a long while it just became a house and though the house still had the same musty smell that it had when my grandmother lived there I no longer expected to see her pop into her home. When I see pictures of her cheerful smiling face I still miss her but now her memory lives in my heart not in her house   or her things.