Susan Stone

I gave this music box to my younger sister Janis when she went away to college.  I felt the need for ritual, as I always do.  So I ceremoniously handed it to her the day she left, with the implicit message in the tune it played when you wound the round shiny disc on the bottom.   

See Snoopy in his cap?  It played “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag...”, a WWI song.   It was my way of saying, I’m here if you need me.  I was trying to be the older sister I had never been.  That was September, 1969.  She was a freshman.  By December, 1970, her sophomore year, she was dead.  Died in a car accident. 

In the basement of our house, I plucked the music box from the green, battered ping pong table on which lay scattered all of her college possessions, shipped back to us.   I took it for myself  to remember her.  I hope she knew I was trying to be the older sister I never was.  I've kept it all these years.  No descendants will want it without this story.