I had always known about my grandmother’s handbag, but I had never known what was inside it. For years, it sat tucked away in her closet, treated almost like a family rule: no one was supposed to touch it, and when she died, it was to be buried with her.
That instruction had always sounded sentimental, maybe even a little dramatic. But in the quiet hours before her funeral, curiosity and grief finally got the better of me. I opened it.
For a moment, I just stared.
There was no jewelry, no hidden cash, no obvious heirloom. Instead, the bag was filled with envelopes, each folded carefully and tied together with a faded blue ribbon. Every envelope had a name written on it in my grandmother’s familiar handwriting.