engraving
When my Grandfather passed away, I had the job of having to clean out his house, and sorting through his belongings. Quite honestly, it was a really difficult job to do. The man was a total pack rat. He has old newspapers some that dated back from 1940's and a collection of model cars. He had old paintings, furnishings, and even a bunch of old toys. He had musical instruments and music boxes, and even old Avon perfume bottles that my grandma used to collect. The job took about a year to completely get through everything and get it distributed, sold, or dumped which ever was appropriate. It was like the antique road show, gone wild. I did have some things appraised and some actually were worth something.
One thing I found in his attic which I truly enjoyed was a box of items that he had obviously acquired over the years. There were many engraved gifts in the box, things with all different dates, saying things like congratulations on your promotion, and one of the personalized gifts was actually from his marriage to my grandma back in 1960 with their names and the dates on them. I didn't realize that they did custom laser engraving back that long ago, but that is surely how this challis appeared. In any case, it was really nice to have things that had events and times on them, kind of a walk down memory lane. Since grandma and grandpa were both deceased, it was difficult for most of the family members to date some of the older items and where they had come from. Some of the gifts my mom knew around when and where they had been obtained.
It was a very sad time, and at times a very difficult job, but cleaning through my grandfather's house quite frankly brought me closer to my family's roots than I had ever been before. I think that year, our family had more talk about them and the past then we had ever had. I learned about the stories from their childhood, and from my mother's. She even spoke about her grandparents and who they were and where they were from.
Although, a difficult time, our family was definitely brought closer together with the death of my grandfather, and for that I am grateful.