Today, I placed Jimmy's marbles under my Christmas tree.

My maternal grandmother gave birth to a son in January 1934.  She named him James; they called him Jimmy. As the Great Depression and the boll weevil ate through the pocketbooks of southern farmers, Jimmy's health declined. After a long, dry summer of dying crops and dying dreams, he took his final breath surrounded by family on a hot day in September 1936. My own mother was fours years old at the time. He was two.

As a child who loved to plunder among my grandmother's things, I'd often plead with her to take me to the silence of her bedroom and lift the lid to the old sea trunk, the coffin and crib of her memories.  It was always a treat when she'd kneel before the trunk and pull out faded black and white photos from her past. She'd finger the edges of yellowed envelopes stuffed with handwritten letters and show me arrowheads, drawings, report cards, and other items of interest.

While we looked through the trunk, I'd listen for the sound of my grandfather's truck pulling down the long dirt driveway. When it came to the past, my grandfather, who spoke with anger baked on his lips, wanted no resurrections. At the first sound of his truck, my grandmother would slap the lid to the trunk shut and we'd rush from the bedroom.  It wouldn't do for him to find us digging up graves.

One summer day, while my grandfather was gone, my grandmother knelt before the trunk and reached beneath the many layers of treasures, all the way to the bottom.  With hands reflecting a lifetime of hard work, she fished out a small canvas bag approximately four inches long.  She sighed deeply, closed her eyes, and held the bag to her chest.  When she spoke, I could feel her heart pulsing on the syllables. "These were Jimmy's."

She opened the drawstring and carefully dumped several colorful marbles into my hand.  My heart galloped.  I'd heard my mother tell the story of how Jimmy, her baby brother, my grandmother's son, had asked for nothing but his marbles in the hours before his death.  I'd heard of how family members had searched for them.  How he'd died with empty hands before the marbles were found.

The marbles clinked like tiny heartbeats in my palm.  I held the prized toy of a child who had lived less than three years, had died during the depression years, had never traveled outside the boundaries of a few acres of southern soil, had never learned to ride a bike, had never seen snow, had celebrated no more than two Christmases.  I wanted to know what terrible illness had robbed Jimmy of his life, but I knew I must not ask my grandmother.  Her eyes shimmered with tears, and I did not want her eyes to run dry. So, instead of asking the question hovering on the tip of my tongue, I asked something else. Something I already knew the answer to.  Something my mother had told me.

"Where did Granddaddy find them?"

Her voice cracked. "A few days after we buried him, your grandfather was plowing near a tree.  Jimmy used to play close to that tree.  That's where he found them.  He uncovered them with the plow.  But it was too late by then.  Too late."

I thought of Jimmy in his coffin with empty hands and wondered why my grandfather would bury his marbles in the sea trunk.  He'd buried his son in one grave and his marbles in another grave. I thought the marbles should be pulled from the trunk and touched and enjoyed.

Today, I am the guardian of Jimmy's marbles, and I treasure them as my grandmother once did.  I often think of that little boy who became my imaginary childhood friend.  He died more than twenty years before my birth, yet I created a friendship with his ghost that lasted throughout my youth.  By the time I was in the seventh grade I'd betrayed my imaginary friend, abandoned him as I moved into my teen years.  Jimmy had once been the keeper of all my secrets and dreams, all my sins, all the rhythms of my heart.  I didn't know back then I'd one day be the keeper of his marbles.  I resurrected Jimmy's marbles from the grave of the sea trunk.  They create magic under my tree.

Merry Christmas, Jimmy.