What Really Matters

When my grandfather passed away I had lived through my first semester of University. 3 hours away from where I had grown up as a very sheltered, admittedly ignorant of life experience or maturity.
He was a lot of different things. he'd lived a lot of different versions of himself. Before I was born he had a problem with alcohol. when my father was a child, alcoholism was legitimately a life choice, where I'm from.
After a long time of being very unhappy, and abusing himself with alcohol, he realized how unhappy he made my grand mother and their two children, he stopped all that. Turned over a new leaf and became an entirely different version of himself. A man that I grew up with, who made jokes, and liked cartoons. Who always had candy, and some time for being silly with a child.
When I was a teenage my grand father got cancer. Sadly, there is nothing unique in that sentence. Hundreds of people, lose their loved ones to Cancer every day. It is soul crushing, to continue on filling the space in your heart left by a human being, with a handful of memories. memory is truly bittersweet in that it is always telling us that we can never go backwards.
I an a very fortunate person. My grand father went through radiation treatments. He got very very sick, and then he got better. He came home. He drove me home every single time i went for a run, stopped into his home for a glass of water, and didn't want to run home. The day he left my hometown, to come to the city, for his treatments, My Grand father smoked his last cigarette. He said, "Well that's it", and threw half a pack, into the garbage can. To this day, my grand mother swears that he never touched one again
But in 2008, after my first semester away from home, separated from my family, figuring out what was important to me, my grand father got very sick. he was gone within 72 hours. A few years before, he had undergone a hernia operation. Complications had caused him to quietly, painlessly and quickly, slip away from us.
When my grand mother brought home his clothing from the hospital, she emptied his pockets. for some reason, I took the money left there. some change, nothing bigger than a quarter.
I brought it home and put it in a black silk bag.
I never understood what it meant to me. I often wondered if it meant I was a material person. Was I a bad person, because I couldn't find any significance in anything other than money and stuff?
Today I understand what it means to me. As I clean my house on a rainy Sunday, I find my little black silk bag, behind a photograph of my younger brother. My Grandfather, My dad and my brother all share a lot of common features. so it seemed appropriate to keep family together.
Today I know why I kept the money. Not for the value, but for the symbol. The most valuable thing my grandfather has given me, is humility, awareness, and a willingness to start over.
Both literally, and metaphorically, I kept the closest thing I possible could. I kept Change.