With each box I unpacked, my heart sank further. We had driven across the country with the plan of meeting our things on the other side, and had packed most of the essential items in the car, with one very valuable exclusion — all of my jewelry.

The thing is, I've never been much of a jewelry person. If I wear any accessories, I do so sparingly. However, thanks to my grandmother, Rho Rho, my jewelry collection was not lacking in the slightest. I am her only female grandchild, and as such, I have profited greatly. She gave me all her favorite vintage trinkets, some of which were likely valuable, some of which were just valuable to me. Though many of them were not a style I would have necessarily picked out for myself, they transcended personal preference. They had embedded in them family history, and I wore them proudly.

I still remember her wearing some of these pieces, pieces I had hoped to pass on to my kids someday. There was a sterling ring with an amethyst stone, for example; I have a vivid memory of her in the kitchen, thoughtfully twirling it around her finger before taking it off to get her hands dirty with a batch of her famous double-chocolate brownies. Another was of her laughing in her turquoise studded earrings — a style I never used to wear, but have adopted as my own in recent years over the longer dangly earrings I once preferred. The piece I'll miss perhaps most of all, though, is her old wedding ring. Its diamond had long since fallen out once it became mine, and all that remained was the band and empty setting. But the inscription from my grandfather, Pop Pop, and the date of their wedding was still inside, and I often wore it either on my ring finger or chained around my neck.

I had always loved the idea that my jewelry collection was rich with love and history; that the rings I wore on my fingers were tokens of love from my grandfather to my grandmother, or things my grandmother bought herself as souvenirs on family vacations when my mother was just a girl. The bond I share with my grandmother has always felt indelible, and while I don't necessarily consider myself a materialistic person, I liked having these physical symbols of our relationship.