There’s a story in those pennies. I don’t care how poor house tearing apart the furniture looking for spare change broke I may ever be, I will never spend a single one of these pennies.
I can’t.
See, these pennies? They’re special pennies.
They’re from Heaven.
Specifically from my Aunt Kay, my Granny, and Brian’s dad.
We lost Kay the day after Christmas 1996 in an automobile accident. It was sudden, and unexpected, as car accidents are by definition. We scrambled to make arrangements to get to Oklahoma for the funeral. It’s really hard to say goodbye to someone you love surrounded by Christmas trees with unopened presents under them, but we soldiered on, doing what had to be done. The day of the funeral, we went one last time to see Kay, before they closed the casket. Right before they closed the lid, her youngest starts asking everyone for money, because “Mom needs money”. We gave him change.. pennies. So, Rob put a handful of pennies in the casket with Kay.
When we lost Brian’s dad in 2008, it was at the end of a very long fight with cancer. And even though we all knew it was coming, and we all knew we had been living on borrowed time for a while, losing him was like losing your best friend. And to Brian’s kids, it was exactly that. So, at the funeral, right before they closed the casket, I quietly walked up to Dad, and laid 6 pennies in there with him. One for every grandchild he left behind.
It only stood to reason that when my Granny passed, someone should put pennies in with her too. She was clearly going to need pennies in Heaven. It’s our way of saying We Love You, and it has in turn become their way of saying I love You to those of us who have stayed behind.
See, whenever any one of us needed a hug, needed some advice, needed a nudge, we would find a penny on the ground. I told the grandkids that from that day forward, whenever they found a penny on the ground it would always be Grandpa saying I love You from Heaven. Pennies from Heaven. I love you’s from those we’ve said goodbye to.
And so, whenever I find a penny on the ground (and really they are so easy and yet so random to find) I pick it up, and smile and tell my three guardian angels Hi, and I love you too.
