The Silverware Mystery

While we are all doing our best to navigate these difficult times, in the spirit of mom’s positive and optimistic outlook on life, we hope that our posts will bring a smile to your face and brighten your day.

When an elderly person passes away, there are usually memories and memorabilia left behind. Mom was no exception. Her passion was taking pictures…. many of which featured bodies with no heads, blurry images and some selfie attempts that were of poor quality to say the least.

As a result, there were boxes and boxes of photo albums and boxes and boxes of slides to deal with. There was Carnival Glass and Cranberry Glass, teacups and ornamental plates. And there were some “mystery” items that we had never seen before, the most puzzling of which was a small collection of random silverware. It was ornate and definitely old.

There were 8 butter knives in one pattern, 8 dessert forks in another pattern, 1 sugar tong and random serving spoons in 2 altogether different patterns still. We couldn’t figure out why these pieces didn’t match and even more puzzling was the question of where they came from. It was truly a mystery, although it made sense that they were our grandmother’s and Mom had simply kept them for sentimental reasons. They were too beautiful to discard but certainly they were of no practical use. Who used butter knives and dessert forks in this day and age?

It was sheer serendipity then when Mag showed us a new bracelet she had purchased at a recent craft fair. It was beautiful and it was made of old silverware…… Presto! We had a wonderful idea for a Christmas/Memorial Gift for all of Betty’s granddaughters:

The necklaces were lovely and brought tears to the eyes of the recipients when they opened their gift.

We still had pieces of silverware left, so with the help of our “silverware guru”we created other masterpieces and gave them to other relatives who were special to Mom

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The beauty of these pieces is two fold. Not only did we repurpose several items, but we created a truly beautiful piece of jewellery that could eventually become a family heirloom, and of course a keepsake in memory of Mom.

One of the first things that many of us do on Mom’s birthday is check the weather. She always insisted that it never rained on her special day….. we could count on it! And then there is the jewellery…… some of us wear it all the time, some only on special occasions, some only on her birthday and some of us just keep it on display. The main thing is, that we all try to turn to it at some point during the year, especially on her birthday, in her honor.

So, what’s the mystery here? Well, first of all, where did the silverware come from? We are reasonably confident that the pieces had belonged to our Grandmother and Mom inherited them because she was an only child…….. and as far as we know, she wasn’t in the habit of stealing silverware. 🙂

One day, in conversation with an elderly friend, I mentioned that we couldn’t understand why there were only butter knives and dessert forks. To my astonishment, she replied that in the past, because families were often large, they chose to split up silverware sets rather than give one heir the complete set. This made perfect sense, as our Grandmother came from a family of twelve children. Mystery solved and a lovely legacy preserved!

We plan to publish a new post every Monday, so stayed tuned for our next one entitled “Betty Can You Spare a Dime?”