It began quietly — a soft buzz on a Wednesday night, the kind of sound you almost ignore.
Our family group chat had a single new message.
> “Does anyone have $60 to spare? It’s for something important.”
It was from my grandmother.
No emojis. No explanations. Just that single, unadorned line.
Then silence. One by one, I saw the little gray “seen” circles appear beside each name — my mother, my aunts, my cousins. Not a single reply. I waited, hoping someone else would speak. No one did.
Two days later, I messaged her privately:
> “Hey Grandma, is everything okay?”
She never responded.
That night, she died in her sleep.
When my mother called the next morning, her voice trembled with the kind of sadness that carries no surprise — only regret. I didn’t cry. I just sat there, staring at her final message, frozen between guilt and disbelief.
Later, I drove to her apartment to help sort through her things. She’d always lived simply — a one-bedroom home that smelled faintly of lavender and lemon polish, with crocheted blankets draped over armchairs and family photographs lined up like quiet witnesses to time.
On the kitchen table sat a small box, neatly wrapped in pale blue ribbon. Beside it was a folded note with my name written in her careful, looping hand.
> “Thank you for remembering me.”
I stopped breathing for a moment. Then I sat down and untied the ribbon.
Inside were two leather-bound sketchbooks and a pristine set of graphite pencils — the very ones I had admired in a craft store months earlier but never bought for myself.
Her note, tucked beneath them, read:
> “You always believed in my stories. I wanted you to have the tools to tell your own.”
That was when I broke.
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