I got my husband his dream watch for our tenth anniversary. All he got me was cheap perfume in a plastic bottle. I was so angry I tossed it aside and never used it. That was our last celebration. He died unexpectedly three weeks later. Today I was cleaning and the bottle fell. I froze. Inside, he was hiding a folded note and a thin gold chain.<\/p>\n
The note was short. He wrote that the perfume was a joke he had meant to explain over dinner, and that the real gift was the chain, which had belonged to his mother. He had been afraid I would say it was too much, so he had put it in the bottle and planned to tell me when I opened it. He never got the chance. The chain was still coiled at the bottom, the clasp closed the way he always closed things carefully.<\/p>\n
I sat on the floor with the bottle in one hand and the note in the other. The watch I had given him was still in its box on the dresser. I had been so focused on the plastic and the price that I had not looked past either. The note said he was proud of the years we had already had and that he wanted the chain to be something I could keep even if he was not there to fasten it.<\/p>\n
I put the chain on. It sat lighter than I expected. The perfume is still in the bathroom, empty now except for the note I folded back inside. I do not open the bottle often. When I do, the note is still there, and the chain is still around my neck. The last gift he gave me was the one I almost threw away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got my husband his dream watch for our tenth anniversary. All he got me was cheap perfume in a plastic bottle. I was so angry I… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n