Every Day Sentimental Carry

Nenya

Inspired by this post I thought it would be interesting to know how many of us carry something around every day for sentimental reasons; if so, what is it and why?

I always carry a small holding cross which my son unwittingly gave me years ago with a chocolate Easter egg. He doesn't have an overt faith and didn't realise the egg came with an olive wood cross, but I'd always wanted a holding cross and it means a lot to me that it came from him, albeit unintentionally.

Sojourner

My mother’s wedding ring. We did not get on at all and when she died my sister and I washed and wrapped her body. A very helpful nun at the hospice advised us to take her jewelry as she was to be cremated: my sister & I looked at each other and I stuck the ring on my right little finger. It has been there ever since.

ToTheLeastRebel

Nenya wrote: »

Inspired by this post

I spent nearly all of my working life in a very hilly city overseas far away from my homeland. In 2022 I was nearing retirement and getting ready to move back to Scotland. There were very few things I felt I had left undone in my adopted home town: but there was one thing that had been eluding me for some time. Near the school where I worked there was a mountain that I enjoyed running up. With a close friend who had also become a colleague, I would usually run to the summit of it once a week. I had a lot of beautiful memories running up and down that hill. I also, for a time, held the "record" - if you know about the Strava running app, you know the sort of record I mean - for getting to the summit from our usual car park. Then someone else captured my record. I set myself the task of recapturing it before I left the city for good. I was getting nowhere near.

On the last day that I would have the opportunity to try, my day got away from me. I didn't have time to eat breakfast or lunch. I was busy all day. In my last period, saying goodbye to my last class, I told them the story of my summit record and spoke of my mild regret at not recapturing my record before I left, and said I would have no chance today because I was tired and hadn't eaten.

A wee lass in the class produced from her pocket a very small pack of Skittles and gave it me, saying "Don't give up. Eat these and go for it."

I ate half the pack as I left the car and saved the other half for the summit, to recruit my shattered legs for the way down. But I knew there was no chance. I just enjoyed that last run.

Then when I checked my time in the app later, I found I had done it! And I've kept that empty Skittles packet in my wallet ever since, and I always will.

Hedgehog

For well over 50 years, I have carried a medallion in my pocket with St. Christopher on one side and St. Anthony on the other. It used to be a silver color, but after decades of being in my pocket all the silver coloring has worn off and now it is more a bronze color.

It has a hole so that it could be made into a necklace. Many, many years ago I tried that, but the string kept breaking and I was afraid I would lose the medallion, so back into my pocket it went!

Leorning Cniht

I tend not to carry sentimental things, for fear of losing them. I prefer to scatter them about my house, so I see them on a daily basis. My bible has a lace work cross bookmark that my Grandmother made for me when I was confirmed. My tattered copy of Delia Smith's cookbook has a handful of loose pages of cooking instructions in my other Grandmother's handwriting tucked between the pages.

Graven Image

I do not carry things, but each holiday I put out a small model of a 1940 Ford pickup truck. I fill the bed with seasonal things. Thanksgiving mini pumpkins, Christmas mini trees, and so on. It is a copy of the real truck my late husband proposed to me in. We did the same when he was alive.

Lamb Chopped

How lovely!

Boogie

Yes, that is very special @Graven Image

I also wear my Mum's wedding ring on my right hand little finger. She died peacefully at my brother's with us all there. My SIL laid her out and gave me the ring.

Lamb Chopped

That's lovely.

I handed out my mother's rings at her funeral luncheon, to the granddaughters of the family.

MrsBeaky

I wear my mother's engagement ring which she left to me when she died in 2019. There's quite a story attached to her engagement to my Dad, a real love story.
Mum studied at Smith College, New Hampshire and majored in Theatre. She won a Fullbright scholarship to RADA in London (she was there as a postgraduate when Joan Collins was there as a younger student!)
Whilst at RADA a fellow Fullbright introduced her to a dashing young army officer. After a whirlwind romance, she returned to the US and my Dad went off to the Korean War. Having survived WW2 Dad honestly thought he might not come back from Korea and so told Mum not to wait for him. He did return and wrote to my mother who was now working at NBC in New York and discovered that she had waited for him.
He bought the ring in Bond Street, got on a plane and flew to the US to propose to her. They married in my mother's home town, Baltimore, and returned to the UK.
It's a beautiful ring with a beautiful history.

Nenya

I wear my mum's wedding and engagement rings too and have done for years. I prefer them to my own, which now no longer fit me.

Jengie Jon

Until the link was damaged and it could no longer go on my key ring, I carried my father's penknife. I suspect it was my grandfather's before Dad owned it.

Graven Image

So many lovely stories of mothers' rings still being worn. I am sure they would be pleased.

Eigon

My mum has given me her engagement and wedding rings, having been a widow for some time, but her fingers were so much smaller than mine that I can't wear them, unless as a necklace.

Gracious Rebel

I wear an old ring that I don't exactly know where it comes from - my partner had been wearing it when she died, I think it must have been her grandmother's or something. (Jeweller identified it as early 20th Century European) But I wear it to remember her. And I have a couple of necklaces that were made which include fragments from her ashes ... don't wear one every day, but fairly often, and glad to have them.