A Locket's Lifetime

As the sun made the horizon its bed in the distance, its golden tendrils stretching out over the trees and buildings as if it was trying to hold onto the daytime for just a bit longer, the grandmother smiled faintly. She could never tire of this sight, gold-dipped sunsets that she could observe from her porch.

           She was sitting in her rocking chair, ever the cliché, and she held her locket to her chest as if to say, Can you see it dear? Can you see how the sky bends to make way for you?

           As the sky dimmed inevitably and the cool air of dusk filtered in, the grandmother heard her front door open paired with the soft padding of feet. She smiled again, bigger now, and turned to her granddaughter Tilda.

           She seemed shy and far off, twisting her foot into the worn wood of the porch over by the welcome mat. “Come on over dear; I don’t bite,” the grandmother said warmly with a smile, causing Tilda to shake off her shy demeanor for long enough to cross the threshold over to her grandmother.

           “What is it that you needed that made you come out here to see little old me?” the grandmother questioned with a spark in her eyes, beckoning her grandchild even closer.

           After a moment of silence, her small granddaughter who was a few weeks older than nine came forward and sat on her lap like she always does. “Well grandma, there is this thing coming up at school, and me and my mom thought your locket would look perfect with my dress.”

           The grandmother paused, processing what Tilda was asking of her. She wanted to wear her locket for some fancy event at her school. She stared off in the distance for a second before Tilda rushed for an explanation.

           “It would just be for one night! I’d be very careful with it all night and return right after without even a scratch,” Tilda explained quickly. She stared at her grandmother intently to register her reaction.

           “Oh, this old thing?” the grandmother asked after a moment, turning to look warmly into her granddaughter’s eyes.

           It really was an old thing if she thought about it. She first got the locket herself when she was six for Christmas, and oh how she complained that she got some dumb jewelry as a gift instead of the pretty doll she wanted.

           But her mother told her to hush up and showed her the picture that lay inside: a classic picture of the depiction of Jesus. That just made her complain some more, until her father took her from the floor where she wallowed and plopped her into his lap.

           He explained gently how God was always watching over her, and as long as she had Jesus always by her heart to remind her, then she’d be unstoppable and nothing bad would come her way.

           From that moment on, she wore the locket like a badge of honor, flaunting it to her friends later on and bragging about how she was unstoppable. It kept her brave as she climbed the tall tree that she used to be too afraid to climb, kept her brave to jump across the creek when the boys teased her about how she couldn’t, and it kept her brave late at night when the shadows would shift into unthinkable monsters in her mind. With her new locket, she was unstoppable.

           She had really believed it too, that was until her father died in a car crash on the way home for work when she was eight. She thought that if she held the locket tight enough, if she pressed it to her heart enough, that God would answer her prayers and send her father running out of that hospital room, smiling and holding her again to where she felt safe and like everything was okay.

           That never happened, though, her prayers were never answered, and she no longer felt unstoppable since that day.

           She switched out her picture of Jesus for one of her father the day after his funeral, looking through all of their pictures of him for just the right one. She decided that she would rather have her father close to her heart to watch over her than some entity she didn’t understand and didn’t seem to even care about her.

           And she kept her father close to heart in her locket ever since that day, holding onto it tight to make sure she didn’t lose it when she was running with her friends, taking it off when she bathed so she wouldn’t rust the metal or make the picture run, and she even wore it to her first school dance when she was twelve.

           She went with some boy that was smaller than her which she can’t recall the name of now, and she hardly even danced at the event, but she still kept the locket placed right over her heart.

           She didn’t change the picture, not even when she fell in love with a man that she knew she would marry. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, replace the picture of her father for some guy she wasn’t even sure if he would approve of.

           Her mother approved of him, even said that her father would have too if he was still alive, and then she was set to marry him right before he was drafted to go off to fight in the war at the time.

           Even on her wedding day, she kept the old and graying picture of her father in her locket as she walked down the aisle, refusing to have anyone accompany her because she knew she would just feel her father’s presence as she walked towards her future husband.

           And she did; she could almost feel her father’s warm and firm arm interlocked with hers as she made her way down the aisle, and it brought tears to her eyes that she had to wipe away quickly in order to prevent her makeup from running.

           It was only after that day, though, did she change his picture to one of her husband. She knew that her father would want her to move on, to live her life without always lugging his picture around. And though she replaced his picture and held a picture of her husband instead when he went off to the war, she still knew her father was in her heart.

           She kept her husband close to the heart for the next couple years as he fought in the war, sometimes quietly crying at night when she was too lonely to avoid it. But holding onto that picture and looking at it every now and again is what kept her heart stubbornly beating out the hope of him coming home.

           And he did come home eventually, and they soon had a kid afterwards, then another, and then another. Her heart was full again as she replaced the single picture of her husband to a family picture with him and their children.

           She continued to hold the locket close to her heart, causing the metal to turn discolored from holding it all her years. She held it when her kids first went to Kindergarten, then junior high, then high school, and then eventually college.

           She didn’t really feel her kids’ absences when they finally left the nest, though, because they were right next to her heart the entire time, and she had the love of her life as well.

She can still distinctly remember one night, for no reason in particular, her husband took out the fine wine and cooked for her as well. He later brought out one of their favorite records and put it on the record player, and they simply slow danced in the middle of their living room.

Her heart was so full that night, it felt like it was going to burst out her chest and spill the love she had for him all across the floors. All of the pain she went through with losing her father, all of the restless nights she waited for her husband to come home from the war, all of the time spent on raising her kids, it all had lead up to this, and she was happy with it.

She continued to hold onto the locket, even when her husband died from a fatal lung infection. She didn’t tear it off of her neck in a fit of helpless rage like she wanted to, she didn’t take out the picture of him because it was too painful, she just continued to hold onto the old and worn jewelry on her neck.

She wore it to his funeral, getting the same feeling as when her father died: that he now rested inside of her heart. So, she kept the locket there from that day on, through the marriage of her kids and the birth of her grandkids.

She hadn’t changed the picture since, and now she was facing Tilda, her granddaughter that wanted to borrow it for her school event. She couldn’t imagine why she wanted the old worn thing since it was completely discolored from its original shine and polish.

A silence had fallen over them while the grandmother relived her life, thinking of all of the things her locket has gone through and changed for. It had only been a minute or two in real time between the grandmother and granddaughter, but it felt like a lifetime for the former.

Suddenly, shaken into the present as the sun finally retreated from the sky completely, leaving them in the dark on the porch, the grandmother refocused her eyes on Tilda.

“Of course you can wear it, sweetie,” she reassured her granddaughter, noticing how she had become anxious in the unexplained silence between them.

“Are you sure grandma? I really don’t need it if it’ll bother you too much,” Tilda asked timidly, being unable to read her grandmother’s odd demeanor.

“No, no. I insist. You know what?” The grandmother stopped talking abruptly, taking her old hands from around Tilda to her neck to unlatch her locket. She then opened it when she had gotten it free from her neck, and with a sad smile grazing her face for only a moment, she carefully took out the picture of her husband and kids.

“You should keep it. Put a picture of someone important, someone you love in there so you can keep them close to your heart,” the grandmother said warmly, smiling at her granddaughter even in the dark of late dusk.

“Really?” Tilda asked, suddenly excited by the prospect of having a locket of her own. The grandmother just smiled and nodded in response, which caused a sound of joy to escape Tilda. “Thank you so much! I’ve gotta tell mom!”

And like that, she bumbled away, and the grandmother was looking at the horizon which had now darkened and dulled without the sun’s presence. She still had a smile on her face, though, and thought to herself, I wonder what journeys the locket has in store now.