The gift that was not to be

While gathering up things for the Memory Vault, I came across these:

These are the movie stubs and other tickets from the first years we dated. I was going to put them in a frame and give them to her on our tenth anniversary.

There are advantages to being a packrat.

Tales from the Memory Vault

This is the box I keep the mementos from my life with Deb in. I call it the Memory Vault.

Deb was a packrat, and so am I. It was hard to part with her things, but I eventually decided to be sensible and keep just enough to fill one bin.

I'm going to share some of those memories here through some of the things inside of it.


These are the Tigger ears she bought when we went to Disneyland on our first trip together. Every time I get on the Winnie the Pooh ride, I think of her singing the Tigger theme song. If her ghost haunts any place on this earth, it's that ride.






These are seashells I brought back to her from a trip I made to St. Petersburg. Little did we know that a couple of years later we would actually move to Florida and she could've gotten her own shells.








This is the stuffed animal I won for her at Six Flags in Denver. She couldn't make the trip, so I brought it back for her, like a good boyfriend should.









This was her hairbrush. It still has strands of her hair in it.











This is her wedding dress, her bouquet, the cake topper, the wedding cake service set and the Minnie and Mickey dolls we got on our honeymoon to Disney World.

The things in the Memory Vault mean a lot to me, but not as much as the memories they bring back, of course.