My great grandma's wedding ring;Clara who was my grandma was born in Italy in the 1900’s. She moved to America when my dad was three because he got meningitis and became deaf and the US had better options and resources for him. When they arrived in New York they got wrapped up into the mafia and became very wealthy. She ran a laundromat for the sole purpose of having an area to hold large amounts of cash. She ended up doing this her whole life until it was passed onto other members of the family. My great grandpa and her got married really young so the ring itself isn't the most stunning thing on the earth but it is very classy and has quite a large stone on it. I was my Great Grandma's first Great Grandchild, and she has always loved me. She was not a nice person and very hard headed and was rude to most people in the family except for her son (my grandpa) and my aunt (her granddaughter) my dad and myself. There were many times where we would have family dinners on Sunday and she would only talk to us four and we still have no idea to this day why- she said that she hated everyone else and would just flat out mean things but nobody said anything because she was who she was. One core memory I have of her is when I went to visit her in New York, she had a huge house with 8 bedrooms and a pool. We arrived and she told me that she had a surprise for me- she made a whole bedroom just for me that was just gorgeous, she didn't do this for anyone but me and we truly do not know why. That night my siblings and I went swimming in the pool and she came down to swim, we were shocked until she said “Aly I squeezed into this suit just for you” I laughed but all of the cousins were mad. We swam and she braided my hair that night and tucked me in my new room. The rest of the cousins slept in what we called “the bunk bed room” which was a huge room with a bunch of beds but not me, I slept alone in my brand new room. This was the last time I saw her before she got diagnosed with dementia. 

After we moved her out of her house and into an old people home where she could get the 24/7 care she needed she became mean to everyone, she died very angry at our family and was not happy that she was in the nursing home. I celebrated each birthday with her from 99-103 because we never knew which one would be the last. The last time I saw her was her 103rd birthday when she gave me the ring. She gave it to me with no context, just “I want you to have this” and then she died 4 days later when I got back to Wisconsin. She left me a huge college fund and left my dad her house in New York but didn't give anyone else anything. I still think that to this day she knew that she was going to die but waited for me to come say goodbye then get back home to Wisconsin so I couldn't see her dead.