My careful hands slowly lift a skillfully wrapped jewelry box out of its cardboard container, gently setting it on the dresser in front of me. I repeat the process twice more to free the other two boxes, and then set the empty cardboard box aside for later disposal. My eyes shift between the wooden boxes on my otherwise bare dresser, and the large amount of moving boxes scattered around my room. The choice of what to do seems to be one of the easiest I’ll ever have to make as I skillfully ignore the boxes behind me and instead pull open one of the side doors on one of the three boxes in front of me.

I look through the necklaces held in the small place, a smile splitting my lips as my fingers brush over one of the more…ugly ones. In truth, the necklace had the potential to be pretty. It had a silver chain, and dangling from it was a beautiful dragon curled around a dark blue ball. It sounds pretty, but the only problem was…well, the size of the ball. The thing was huge, and it made the necklace not only tacky, but also quite heavy and too cumbersome to wear around one’s neck. Why my grandmother thought it was a good idea to send me, not one, but two of these ugly things (one with a pink ball, of all the ugly colors in the world), I will never know.

My dad always asks me why I keep the damn thing if I think it’s so tacky and useless. If I’ll never wear it, why not just throw it out? I would have more room in the jewelry boxes, and I wouldn’t have to look at the ugly thing in distaste if I didn’t have it to look at anymore. But what he doesn’t understand is, you can’t just toss out something a dead relative gave you, even if it is tacky.

Yes, I know that the thing is definite trash, and yes, I know it’s pointless to keep it around if I’ll never wear it. But see, the thing is, it isn’t pointless. My grandmother thought it was beautiful, and she thought I’d like it, and to me, that’s more important than whether or not it’s pretty enough in my opinion for me to wear. It’s not about how the necklace is heavy and ridiculous. What’s important is that my grandmother, who has since passed away, bought it for me and sent it to Texas all the way from Delaware because she thought I would enjoy it, and because she wanted to send me something I would enjoy. It’s the thought that counts, right?

With a sigh and an amused smile, I slip the thing back onto it’s little hook inside the door. Sure, I’ll never wear it, and my dad and anyone else who sees it might think it’s a ridiculous thing to keep around, but they didn’t know my grandmother. I did, and I think, though the necklace might not literally be beautiful, the meaning behind it is one of the most beautiful things in the world.