I’ve been carrying a rock around in my pocket for a couple of months.
The smooth, bean-shaped stone is about an inch and a half long, half an inch wide and five sixteenths of an inch thick. It’s smooth, like a worry stone. Not perfectly smooth, like the kind you’d find in a gift shop. But smooth in a natural way, with some imperfections and slight ridges that make you know it’s real.

At night, the bean stone rests on my dresser along with my keys, watch and glasses. During the day it’s in the left-front pocket of my jeans. Every now and then I reach in to feel it there, or pull it out to hold for a while, maybe rub my thumb along its length as I imagine my mother holding it in the same way.
Mom died on April 13, 2014.
It happened to be Palm Sunday. I think that would have made her happy, as she drew her last breaths, knowing that she was going to die on a significant day on the church calendar. I held her hand all that morning and into the early afternoon until she was gone, and I think that gave us both comfort.
Now I hold the bean stone.
Dad died on July 16, 2003.
I found it when I was going through Dad’s things. I shoved it in my own pocket, and carried it there for more than two years. It finally wore out, plastic handles loose and blade without much edge anymore. That knife helped me through the hardest part after Dad died.
I still miss him every day, but the edge isn’t quite as sharp.
And now I have the bean stone, a small, tangible talisman I can hold on to as I make it through the hardest part of missing Mom every day, too.

IV Words comes to you thanks to my own resources, donations and sponsorships.
Please consider helping out. Click here to become a reader-supporter
or here to become a blog sponsor. Thank you!
1 Comment
Jesus and Happy Days in Three Tiny Towns - · April 14, 2020 at 1:00 pm
[…] grandparents and both parents are gone, now. I think about them a lot this time of year. I still own a pair of black Chuck Taylors, but high-tops. I haven’t watched […]