As they say in movies, this story is partially based on "true events." And funnily enough, it is a Christmas Story despite the setting. So here goes:

He looked down. He didn’t need her to be alive, for she lived on in his head. She always had. She had moved on. Got married. Had children. Become widowed. All the things that fill in the dash on a gravestone between birth and death. Later than her, he had also moved on. Got married. Had children. Become …widowed.

Now, years after staring down at the woman he loved in her casket, he found himself staring down at another woman he had loved... oh so long ago. He could feel a soft palm curl into his. A smile whispered across his face. He squeezed back. He knew it was her, the woman he had loved for so long.
She was holding his hand to let him know he should take a good look.

So he did.

Leaning over to see better, age had taken his vision- but not his ability to see. And there it was. He had given it to her their first Christmas together. Just an ordinary gift from an Eighth Grader to his Sixth Grade girlfriend. A pendant.

A small gold heart with a single diamond in it. It hung from a chain that was worn smooth from the gentle rides her fingers had given the heart - as it weaved back and forth. Netting a secure place in her actual heart.

He straightened up. Tears welling without any sense of decorum. The pendant had proved what he had always thought.

She didn’t forget him.

She kept the necklace.

It was enough.

Everyone watched him go. Wondering whose hand he was holding. He knew. So did she. The light hit the tiny diamond; winking at the man as he left. He had known two women.
One he gave a necklace.
One he gave a ring.
The order never changed.
Only time did.