Prologue.  Before YA and I went to St. Louis for my mom’s service and to clean out her condo, my middle sister mentioned that we should keep an eye out for Nonny’s wedding ring. She had stopped wearing it a few years back (due to her arthritis) and apparently it was now missing.  When we arrived and stopped at my sister’s house, she talked about it again.  Over the course of the next 24 hours, it was clear that she has also told everyone else in the family about the ring being missing. 

Everybody looked all over the “normal” places and one of the funnier parts of the week was all of us, one by one, discovering the plastic bag in the closet labeled “Wedding Ring”.  Unfortunately we all had our hopes dashed one at a time as it was discovered over and over again that it was an old quilt in the wedding ring pattern.  Shoot.

On Tuesday, in the back corner of a closet, we found “the box”.  It was a security box – a little surprising since it probably cost more than we figured Nonny would spend.  We were pretty sure we had all of Nonny’s important papers so were a little perplexed as to why she had a high-level security box.  It took us quite a while to find the keys as we had made quite a mess of her condo, emptying out drawers and closets to start sorting into piles of “toss, keep, donate”, and in that time, we had a whole lot of wild speculation going.  Were we all adopted and the papers were in there?  Witness protection proof?  Secret bank accounts?  All most all of us (there were ten of us in the condo at that point) were thinking we would find her wedding ring.

This is what we found when we opened the box:

As a non-believer, I was a little hesitant to unseal this envelope so my nephew pulled it out of the box.  He was a little wary as well.  There was one piece of paper in the envelope:

What?  Wars, Vaccumn (sic), David Surgery, Dorothy, Sunday School.  What?  Two hours of discussion.  The list was obviously made two and a half years ago.  That’s when David’s first surgery happened and was when Dorothy, her neighbor across the hall passed away; we think that wars, David and Dorothy were ideal candidates for God to keep an eye on.  But vacuum and the Sunday School class?  And why this single sheet in this single envelope labeled God and locked by itself in a very secure box?  I mean, Nonny was an inveterate list-maker.  We found several of them while we were cleaning but none of the others made the box.

During our talks, we came up with more wild ideas about why, why, why.  I won’t go into all of them here but I’ll tell you mine, simply because it got the most laughs.

Sometime in the future, 10 people (all strangers) will be staying at a fancy spa on a little island in the Caribbean.  Beginning the first night of their stay, two of these folks have envelopes delivered to their room.  In each envelope is a notecard with the word “wars”.  At breakfast, they all scratch their heads about it, but then later in the day, both folks are found murdered.  And of course, the only boat has been disabled and no one’s phones can get a connection off the island.  Too far to swim to the nearest island.  One the second night, two more folks get an envelope with a card waying “vacuum”.  You guessed it… both those folks are found dead during the next day.  The remaining six folks have one day to figure out the clues before the next deaths….

Any better thoughts?  Do you have a lock-box?  Will it be a mystery to your heirs?