When I was six, I would walk my granny to her room. She liked it when I held her hand. When I went to her room, she always spoke nice things about me.
I realized out years later that she had been monitoring me. Not in a way that scares you. But it seemed like she was trying to remember me moment by moment. She appeared to remember every flaw on my cheek, every grin I made, and even how I dragged my foot on the third step because it groaned louder than the rest.
“Zaina, there’s something different about you,” she’d always say. She would comment, “It’s like you have gold behind your eyes.” I never really got what that meant. My grandma stated something unusual that I thought was strange.
When I was ten, she began to forget things. At first, they weren’t big things. It was merely her purse, the names of my cousins, or if she had already fed the cat.
We all ignored it. “She’s getting old,” my mom would say with a sigh, trying to convince herself more than anybody else. But then Grandma asked me if I was her sister and put the kettle in the fridge. I was eleven years old. That was the first time I cried for someone who wasn’t dead.
The doctor stated it was Alzheimer’s disease. Starts early. It seemed like someone had abruptly 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 utter a word. I wasn’t able to. She used to hum as she went up the stairs, but now she couldn’t get past the second step without stopping to catch her breath.
About 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. Even when she couldn’t follow the story anymore, she would close her eyes and nod as if she understood every word.
She still held my hand.
One night, just as the sky was becoming that lovely lavender hue before midnight, she held it tighter than usual. “Don’t let them throw it away,” she murmured quietly.
I looked at her and didn’t get it. “Throw away what, Nani?”
But she was already asleep, and my hand was still warm in hers.
I tried to talk to her about it again when I was thirteen 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 grandpa, which I don’t.
She didn’t talk much by the time she was sixteen. But I stayed there and read to her.
I didn’t attend to school for a week after Mom passed away.
The house felt colder without her. This mood affected not only your mind but also your body. My mom said it was probably just because the vent in her room wasn’t working as well as it used to. I knew better, though.
A month after the funeral, my parents started to clean out her room. While I was seated in the hallway, my dad took her old bookcase out of the house. A little notebook with flowers on the cover fell out from under it. The corners were all worn out and faded.
He gave it to me and said, “She probably meant to give it to you.” Your name is written inside.
I opened it right there on the floor.
Page one says, “For Zaina, when she’s ready.”
My heart was racing. The pages weren’t journal entries. They were short notes. Notes. A few of them were written when I was a kid who was easily influenced. A little while after I started school. Even if the dates were wrong, I could tell what time it was by how she talked about me.
“You wanted to know why the moon is following the car today.” I told you it was only to keep you safe.
“You don’t know how sweet you are.” It looks like your heart doesn’t like being unkind.
“People will try to make you doubt your worth.” Don’t let them stay in your heart.
Every letter made me feel bad. I didn’t know whether to cry or grin. I probably did both.
Then I found the last few pages.
They were more serious. Not so flowery.
“You won’t understand some things in the world until you’ve been hurt.” “Things that can’t be taught, only felt.”
“Up there, in the old mirror, there’s something.” Not magic. I couldn’t put it down.
Wait a second. What type of mirror?
I knew that she had a dresser with a mirror on it in her room. I assumed that might be what she meant.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I ran up the stairs. By now, my parents had gotten rid of most of their things. But the mirror was still there, leaning against the wall.
It wasn’t particularly fancy. The frame is made of wood and is oval-shaped. It has a few chips. But what’s behind it? I hadn’t looked.
I turned it over.
There was tape on the back of the envelope. Getting yellow over time. The cursive writing of my name looked shakier than I recalled it.
There was a key in it. I also found a letter that said, “It’s in the garden.” Under the rosebush that never dies.
I was surprised and stood there.
We had three rose plants. Except for the one next to the broken birdbath, everyone was having a hard time. That one always bloomed. That one kept flowering even throughout the winter, when everything else stopped.
I didn’t waste any time. I went immediately there with a tiny shovel from the garage.
For twenty minutes, I had to dig carefully so I didn’t hurt the roots. My shovel finally hit something substantial.
A little box constructed of metal. The edges of the box were rusty.
I had to force it open.
Inside were three things:
A blurry image of my granddad that I had never seen before. He looked young, happy, and in love.
A letter to “My Future.”
A pendant in a velvet pouch.
I put the necklace in the light. There was a gold coin inside the locket that looked like a teardrop. On the reverse, it says “1974.”
I sat on the ground and didn’t move.
My grandmother wrote the letter before I was born.
“Since you’re reading this, I’m gone, and you’ve always been the one to ask questions.”
“This pendant is one of the few things we could take with us when we left Hyderabad.” Your grandfather wanted to sell it at one point. No, we didn’t. I told them it was for a deeper reason. I believe it still does.
“Keep it, wear it, or sell it.” But remember that there is a reason for everything we have maintained for this long. It seemed like love. It was during a war. It showed us everything that transpired in our lives.
“Make sure it doesn’t get lost in the fog.”
I didn’t sell it.
I wore it at my graduation. Then I went to my first job interview.
I didn’t tell anyone. It felt like I had a secret power that only I had.
Years later, when I worked at the library in town, I planned a night of storytelling for older people. I thought about Nani.
I read one of her letters out loud. They didn’t disclose where it came from, only that it was from “someone wise who knew how to love deeply.”
After that, an older woman came up to me with tears in her eyes. She stated the lines made her think of her sister, who she hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. She planned to call her once she left the event.
I held the locket close to my heart as I walked home that night.
And I finally got it.
Nani hadn’t been keeping anything of value hidden. 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, maybe a few hundred dollars at most. I had it checked out since I was interested. It was hard to find the coin, but it wasn’t worth much. Around three hundred dollars. But how much does it cost? It’s worth more than just cash.
But here’s the twist:
A few months later, a woman named Ruya got in touch with me. She told me she was my grandmother’s cousin.
“We lost touch when your grandparents moved here,” she said.
She found us after hearing about the necklace. It seems that her family kept the second half of the coin locket. They also had the second half of the letters that Nani sent. Letters that were meant for me.
It turns out that my grandmother had made two copies: one that she kept hidden in her home here and one that she sent back in pieces to her home country, just in case.
Ruya gave me the rest.
In three nights, I read them all.
She talked about trust and fear. She said she was afraid that her mind might wander before she could see me grow as a person.
But mostly, she talked about how to make choices. That life wouldn’t provide me easy answers. She said before that being “different” has nothing to do with talent. It was about choosing love even when it hurt.
And I’ve held on to that reality like a fire ever since.
Now I teach a class for kids whose grandparents have died. We read, write, and dig deep into our feelings. Sometimes I tell kids that the best gifts don’t come in boxes.
Sometimes they are hidden under rose bushes. They might also be hidden behind mirrors.
And sometimes they live inside of you, like a memory that never goes away.
If you lost someone and are reading this, don’t rush to pack their things.
They might have forgotten something.
No cash. They didn’t leave behind anything of value. But what does it mean?
You don’t want to lose out on that kind of inheritance.
Tell other people about this if it moved you. Someone out there could need a reminder of what is worth keeping.