That note in the box keeps coming back into my mind. The part where she said “I hoped you still did too.” Did I still remember my grandmother? Of course I do. But I think she meant more than that.

She meant did I still remember that night, that feeling, that promise of humming to babies. And I didn’t really, not until this lullaby came back into my life. I’d tucked it away for so many years. I had my own kids, my own life. My grandmother was just a sweet memory I’d pull out on holidays. But Margaret had been holding the full story for sixty years, keeping it alive through those little boxes.

I got up off the floor and went to the shelf. I picked up the first box from twenty years ago. A little square one with a faded floral print. I wound it. It played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I wound the next one. “Edelweiss.” They were all little pieces of her world, the songs from her time. And this year she finally told me why.

My hand is still shaking a little when I look at that note. But I’ll be honest, it feels good to know. It feels like my grandmother wrapped her arm around me one last time and said, “See? She never forgot either.”

That lullaby is inside my head now, and it’s not going anywhere.