When I was 6, I used to walk my grandmother up to her room. She liked holding my hand. When I went to her room, she’d always compliment me…
Years later, I realized that she had been studying me.
Not in a creepy way. But like she was trying to memorize me, moment by moment. Every freckle on my cheek, every way I smiled, even how I dragged my feet on the third step because it creaked louder than the others.
She’d always say, “Zaina, there’s something different in you. Like you’ve got gold behind your eyes.” I never really knew what that meant. I thought it was just a weird grandma thing to say.
By the time I was ten, she started forgetting things. Not big things at first. Just her purse, the names of my cousins, or whether she had already fed the cat.
We all brushed it off. “She’s getting old,” my mom would sigh, trying to convince herself more than anyone else. But then one day, Grandma put the kettle in the freezer and asked me if I was her sister.
I was eleven. That was the first time I cried over someone who hadn’t died. The diagnosis was Alzheimer’s.
Early onset. It felt like someone pressed a fast-forward button on our lives. She moved in with us officially the next month.
I gave up my room and started sleeping on a floor mattress in my brother’s. I didn’t complain. I couldn’t.
She used to hum when she walked up the stairs, and by now, she couldn’t make it past the second without gasping. It was around this time I started reading to her. I’d sit at the edge of her bed and flip through her favorite old novels—books she probably hadn’t read in decades.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
TAP ” READ MORE ” 👇
