Our children grew up on peanut butter and jelly   sandwiches. Even my husband and I sometimes ate one secretly at late night with a glass of milk. It was too delicious and tasty. My mother-in-law was the jelly maker in this family. The jelly was made of either grape or blackberry. The only job I did to the jelly making was to save baby food jars  , which my mother-in-law would fill with the tasty gel  , pack them up and send back to our home. For the past 22 years of my married life, whenever I wanted to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for ourselves, all I had to do was reach for one of those little jars of jelly. It was always there. This past December, my mother-in-law passed away. Among the things in the house to be divided by her children were the remaining canned goods in the pantry  . When my husband brought his jars home, we carefully put them away in our pantry. The other day I reached in there to get jelly for a quick sandwich, and there _ was. Sitting all alone on the far side of the shelf was a small jar of grape jelly. As I picked up the jar, I suddenly realized something that I had failed to see earlier-this was the last jar we would ever have from my mother-in-law. Although she had been dead for nearly a year, so much of her had remained with us. Our children had never known a day without their grandmother's jelly. It seems like such a small thing, and most days it was something that was ignored. But today it seemed a great treasure. No longer was it just a jar of jelly. It was the end of a family tradition. I believed that as long as it was there, a part of my mother-in-law would always live on. Why did the couple eat the jelly secretly at late night?
Because it was very delicious and nice. Because it was only made for children. Because it was made by mother-in-law. Because it was good to health.