When I was six, I used to walk my grandma to her room. She liked it when I held her hand. She often spoke nice things about me when I went to her room…
I found out years later that she had been monitoring me. Not in a terrifying way. But it seemed like she was trying to remember me every second. She appeared to recall every mark on my cheek, every smile I made, and even how I dragged my foot on the third step because it creaked more than the others.
“Zaina, there’s something different about you,” she would always say. She would say, “You look like you have gold behind your eyes.” I never really got what that meant. I thought what my granny said was unusual.
When I was ten, she started to forget things. In the beginning, they weren’t very important. It was only her purse, the names of my cousins, or if she had already fed the cat.
We all didn’t pay attention to it. “She’s getting old,” my mom would say with a sigh, trying to convince herself more than anybody else. But Grandma then asked me if I was her sister and put the kettle in the freezer. I was 11 years old. I had never cried for someone who wasn’t dead before.
The doctor stated it was Alzheimer’s disease. Begins early. It seemed as if someone had sped up the course of our lives.
She officially moved in with us the next month. I gave up my room and started sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my brother’s room. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. She used to hum as she walked up the stairs, but now she couldn’t get past the second step without stopping to breathe.
Around this time, I started reading to her. I would sit on the edge of her bed and read her old favorite novels, books she probably hadn’t read in years. She would close her eyes and nod as if she understood every word, even when she couldn’t follow the story anymore.
And she still held my hand.
One night, just as the sky was becoming that wonderful lavender hue before dark, she held on to it tighter than usual. “Don’t let them throw it away,” she murmured softly.
I looked at her and didn’t get it. “What do you want me to throw away, Nani?”
But she was already asleep, and my hand was still warm in hers.
When I was thirteen, I tried to talk to her about it again and asked her what she meant, but she replied she didn’t remember saying anything. She asked me if I liked school and then stated I looked like my grandfather, which I don’t.
By the time she was sixteen, she didn’t say much. But I stayed there and kept reading to her.
After Mom died, I didn’t attend to school for a week.
The house felt colder without her. This feeling spread to both your head and your body. My mom said that was probably because the vent in her room wasn’t running as much anymore. But I knew better.
A month after the funeral, my parents started cleaning up her room. While I was seated in the hallway, my dad took her old bookcase out of the house. A little notebook with a flowery cover slipped out from under it. The corners were all worn and discolored.
He handed it to me and said, “She probably meant to give it to you.” Your name is written on the inside.
I opened it right there on the floor.
“For Zaina, when she’s ready,” is on page one.
My heart raced. The pages weren’t journal entries. They were brief letters. Notes. I wrote some of these when I was a kid and easily influenced. A while after I started school. I could tell what time it was by how she talked about me, even though the dates were wrong.
“You asked me why the car is following the moon today.” I told you it was just to keep you safe.
“You don’t know how kind you are.” It looks like your heart can’t handle harshness.
“People will try to make you doubt your value.” Don’t let them stay in your heart.
Every letter made my heart race. I didn’t know if I should cry or grin. I probably did both.
I found the last couple pages after that.
They were more serious. Not as flowery.
“You won’t understand some things in the world until you’ve been hurt.” “Things that can’t be taught, only felt.”
“There’s something in that old mirror up there.” Not magic. I couldn’t put it away.
Wait a minute. What kind of mirror is it?
I knew she had a dresser with a mirror in her room. I believed that was what she meant.
I ran up the stairs quickly, my pulse racing. By now, my parents had gotten rid of most of their things. The mirror was still there, leaning against the wall.
It wasn’t very nice. The frame is made of wood and is shaped like an oval. It has a few chips in it. But what’s going on behind it? I hadn’t looked.
I turned it over.
There was an envelope taped on the back. Getting more yellow as time goes on. It looked like the cursive writing of my name was shakier than I recalled it.
There was a key in there. I also found a small note that said, “It’s in the garden.” Under the one rosebush that never dies.
I was surprised and just stood there.
We had three bushes of roses. Everyone was having a hard time, except for the one next to the broken birdbath. That one always bloomed. That one kept flowering even throughout the winter, when everything else stopped.
I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed a small shovel from the garage and went right there.
I had to dig for twenty minutes, being careful not to hurt the roots. Finally, my shovel hit something hard.
A small tin box. The edges of the box were rusty.
I made it open.
There were three things in it:
A picture of my granddad that had faded and I had never seen before. He looked happy, young, and in love.
A letter to “My Future.”
A velvet bag with a necklace inside.
I held the necklace up to the light. There was a gold coin within the locket, which was shaped like a teardrop. There is “1974” written on the back.
I sat down on the ground and didn’t move.
My grandmother wrote the letter before I was born.
“Because you’re reading this, I’m gone, and you’ve always been the curious one.”
“This pendant is one of the few things we were able to bring with us when we left Hyderabad.” Your grandfather wanted to sell it once. We didn’t. I assured them it had a bigger purpose. I still think it does.
“Keep it, wear it, or sell it.” But remember this: there is a reason for everything we’ve hoarded for so long. It was like love. It was in a fight. It showed everything that went on in our lives.
“Make sure it doesn’t get lost in the dark.”
I didn’t sell it.
I wore it when I graduated. After that, I went to my first job interview.
I didn’t tell anyone about it. It felt like a secret power that only I had.
Years later, while I was working at the town library, I planned a night of storytelling for older people. I thought about Nani.
I read one of her letters aloud. They didn’t disclose where it came from, only that it came from “someone wise who knew how to love deeply.”
Then, an older woman walked up to me with tears in her eyes. She stated the lines made her think of her sister, whom she hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. She left the meeting with the plan to call her.
That night, I held the locket close to my heart as I walked home.
And I finally got it.
Nani had not been hiding anything of value. She had been putting them in the ground.
She had hidden them in her mirror. In her letters. In me.
The pendant wasn’t worth much money, maybe a few hundred dollars at most. I had it looked at because I wanted to know more. It was hard to find the coin, but it wasn’t worth much. Around $300. But how much is it worth? It’s worth more than just cash.
But here’s the catch:
A few months later, a woman named Ruya got in touch with me. She told me that she was my grandmother’s cousin.
“We lost touch after your grandparents moved here,” she said.
She found us because she heard about the pendant. It seems that her family kept the second half of that currency locket. They also had the second half of the letters that Nani had sent. Letters that were meant for me.
It turns out that my grandmother had started two versions: one that she kept hidden in her home here and one that she sent back to her home country in pieces, just in case.
Ruya sent me the rest.
I read them all in three nights.
She talked about trust and fear. She was afraid that her mind might wander before she could see how much I had grown as a person.
But she talked about making decisions the most. Life wouldn’t give me easy answers. She had said before that being “different” had nothing to do with talent. It was about choosing love even when it hurt.
And ever since then, I’ve held that truth close to my heart.
I currently teach a class for kids whose grandparents have died. We read, write, and look into the depths of our feelings. I tell them sometimes that the nicest gifts don’t come in boxes.
Sometimes they are hidden under rose bushes. They could also be hidden behind mirrors.
And sometimes they live inside you, like a memory that won’t go away.
Don’t rush to pack up their stuff if you lost someone and are reading this.
There might be something they forgot to take.
Not a penny. They didn’t leave anything of value behind. But what does it mean?
You don’t want to miss out on that kind of inheritance.
Let others know if this moved you. Someone out there might need to be reminded of what is worth keeping. ❤️