My knees near gave, because inside the base of that dented coffee pot was a locket on a chain, old and gold, and when I pressed it open there were two tiny photographs inside, and a note curled beneath, and I had to sit before my legs gave out.
The photographs were the two of us. On one side, Nadine and me on our wedding day, impossibly young. On the other side, the two of us just last year, gray and lined and still holding hands.
She had made that locket herself, had our young faces and our old faces set inside it side by side, thirty-four years bridged in a piece of gold small enough to hold in your palm, and she had hidden it in the coffee pot as our anniversary gift.
The note read: Look how young we were. Look how we turned out. Same hands, still holding on. I wanted to give you us, all of it, the whole thirty-four years, in something you could keep over your heart. Wear it and know I am always right there. Love, your Nadine. P.S. I know the pot made you grump. That was the fun of it.
She had wanted me to wear our whole marriage over my heart. And I had shoved it in the pantry, and a month later she was gone, and our young faces and our old faces sat in the dark for a year, holding hands inside a locket I did not know was there.
I put that chain around my neck and I have not taken it off since. Our wedding day and our last good year, both of them, right over my heart, exactly where she wanted them.
Some nights I open the locket and look at us young, two kids who had no idea what a life they were about to build. And then I look at us old, and I think, we did it, Nadine. Thirty-four years. Same hands. Held on the whole way.
When I go, I have told the children, the locket goes with me, our young faces and our old faces still holding hands, so that even then we will not be parted.
The cheapest-looking gift my wife ever gave me held our entire marriage in a piece of gold, and I wear it every day. I make my coffee in that ten-dollar pot each morning, and I touch the locket, and I feel her hand still in mine, young and old and always, the way she promised. Same hands. Still holding on.