Friday, 11 January 2008

• Diamond Bracelets - Irma's Estate

  She wasn't actually my friend, she was Grandma's childhood friend, but they had kept in touch even after both grew up, married and Grandma had my dad and my aunt.  Irma married, but she never was able to have children.  My dad always sort of looked out for Grandma Irma, as I called her, after her husband passed away.  I would go along with him when he visited her.  It always happened at least once weekly.  While he spent a few minutes tightening the hinges on her door, or checking the filter on her furnace, I would get milk and cookies and visit with Irma. 

  It wasn't a case of those things necessarily needing to be done.  In fact, the hinges on the door seemed to loosen about every 2-3 weeks.  Dad knew of course, that Irma was well able to fix the door by herself.  He also knew she was too proud to admit she wanted the company, and Dad was sensitive enough to let her think that he just was going to keep adjusting that hinge or water faucet drip until he got it right.

  Anyway, I must have been about six or seven when Irma first showed me her collection of diamond bracelets. She had dozens of them in various styles and she had stories to tell about things that had happened to her when she was wearing each one.  It seems that her husband had presented her with a diamond bracelet for each year of their married life.  I heard these stories while Dad was trying once again to fix the drip in the bathroom sink.

  I used to see Irma wearing one or sometimes two of the bracelets each time I came to see her after that.  She would always tell me stories about them.  As she got older, I noticed that some of the stories about a particular bracelet were repeated, and I often wondered whether she forgot that she told me that story before, or whether she had confused the diamond bracelets that she had.  She always seemed to be sharp in every other area, so I let it go. 

  When it came time to take care of Irma's estate, we found out the truth.  She had been gradually selling off the diamond bracelets to support any number of worthy causes around the community anonymously and the last three diamond bracelets were bequeathed to me. 

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