I don't know about you but when I was a child I would day dream about some long lost relative dying and leaving me their thousands of dollars.  (That was a big number for me back then.  Come to think of it, it still is!)  It had to be a long lost relative so that I wouldn't miss them and because I knew that the relatives I did have were either not rich or likely to leave me anything. 

I have an eccentric uncle who I love to pieces and several of his nieces, including me, have vied to be the "favorite niece", all in play of course.  This uncle is wonderful for several reasons but one of those is that he collects all sorts of things from which he is always pulling out something to show you.  Some of which can be pretty nice like bedtime stories, and useful things like old, Navy flashlights.   There are things though that you wonder why on earth he has kept them, like the melted something or other from off of a car he had in the 80's.  Some of his things are actual collections but it would be better to say he is a collector of stuff.  Realization dawned upon me one day that if I was the favorite niece, and he being eccentric, he just might will all his earthly possessions to me.   That would mean I would get his stuff.  I quickly declined to remain in the running for favorite niece.  

When my Aunt Sissie died I inherited her cat.  Well, not really as it wasn't written in a will or anything.  The cat just needed a home and I was willing to take her.  Aunt Sissie called her Minnie and in honor of my Aunt who was called Lou, I named the cat Minnie Lou.  She is  a siamese and quite the lady.  She has tiny little squeaks and tiptoes daintily about the house.  She isn't worth thousands of dollars but she certainly acts like she is.  In a funny way she reminds me of Aunt Sissie.  She has charmed us all, except for the other siamese cat in residence.  Ka-Tu wants nothing to do with her and he hisses at her whenever she is near.  He will no longer go to one half of the house because he knows she's back there! 

I don't really want an inheritance of thousands of dollars anymore.  (Although I wouldn't turn one down!)  The memories are worth so much more.  I hope that my memory bank can hold all the wealth that I have and will continue to encrue.  That's what scares me the most about growing old, not a broken down body, not having so little money to live on, not that I won't look twenty ever again, not even losing my memory of where I put the check book, car, or Dear Man, but losing my memories.  Perhaps that's why I write, to remind myself of all the wonderful people the Lord has brought into my life.  Each one of them has unknowingly said, "I leave this to you to remember the good time we had together because someday, I won't be here to remember with you."  It's a grand inheritance.