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Pickles from Beyond the Grave

A story about a neighbor’s last gift

Andy Spears
Good Vibes Club
3 min readJan 10, 2025

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Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

Just this week, I received a gift from an unexpected source.

One of my daughter’s former teachers stopped by for a singular purpose:

To hand me a jar of pickles.

Homemade pickles.

Complete with a label that had my name on it.

Why was this woman who I hadn’t seen in some time suddenly at my door with personalized pickles?

Well: Her sister died. And, apparently, left me pickles.

To be clear, her sister died back in November.

It seems she’d been working up a batch of her (I can’t imagine they are famous) pickles. She had the now-dead cucumbers sliced and in jars filled with whatever brine solution she uses.

And labeled. One of the labeled jars bore my name.

Lucky me!

But wait?

How did the sister of one of my daughter’s elementary school teachers end up putting my name on a jar of homemade pickles? Why was she making me pickles at all, you might wonder? (If you’re still reading this tale from the pickle crypt).

Well, it goes like this:

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Good Vibes Club
Good Vibes Club

Published in Good Vibes Club

A publication to share stories promoting joy and positivity so we can live a life where ‘Every Day is a Good Day.’

Andy Spears
Andy Spears

Written by Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .

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