I open the doors to my grandmother’s room. She looked so frail strapped to a ventilator with her eyes closed and her heart beating at a steady rate. I twist the ring on my right hand, a gift given to me by my grandmother. I don’t know how to feel when I see her like this. I expect a normal person would feel sorrow, sadness, and maybe even anger, but I feel numb. I feel like a robot due to my inability to feel any emotion. My brain works but I can’t comprehend my surroundings, my mood, or my feelings. I hold very little resemblance to my grandmother. Curly, dark-brown hair cascades down my shoulders and my eyes are the brown of milk chocolate. My grandmother was beautiful when she was young. Dark, curly black hair matched with deep-blue eyes through which you could see the whole ocean. Her regality was a trait that was not passed down to me. 

Grandma was always strict and rigid, do this not that, it's my way or the highway. I have always been rather flexible if I do say so myself, a total opposite. I dreaded going to my grandmother’s house. She wasn’t the grandma who made you cookies and told you bedtime stories about Santa Claus, she was a disciplinarian which makes sense considering how she helped out in the army during World War II. I wonder sometimes if she wakes up at night due to the nightmares of the blood and gore she has seen in the past. Whether she cried herself to sleep at night because all she could see behind her eyelids were her friends who died in action. Maybe that’s the reason why she was always so emotionally unavailable because she didn’t want to get hurt again. I walk to her bedside and hold her hand. Sure, she and I didn’t exactly have the best relationship but she was still my grandmother and I loved her all the same. 

I examine my ring carefully. I don’t know why my grandmother gave it to me, I don’t know why it was so special but I remember that she used to keep it with her and wear it everywhere like it was her lifeline. The ring was gold and engraved with olive leaves. Diamond-like studs traced the strategically placed veins of the leaves. You could tell the ring wasn’t made of real gold or real diamonds from the way the paint was chipped off on the inside due to its ancientness.

 Knock, Knock, Knock. Three gentle knocks on the door jolted me out of my trance. My dad stepped into the room, glanced at me, and said, “Go wait for me outside.” It was no secret that this heart attack had left my dad emotionally vulnerable due to the close relationship he had with his mother. I don’t understand how he felt such strong emotions toward someone who was always so harsh and cold. I knew where we were going; we were going to my grandmother’s house to sort all her belongings because her final wish was for us to see her life and all our memories with her. She knew she wasn’t going to make it, everyone knew. It was an open secret, known but never acknowledged, just hanging in the air. 

My father’s car pulled up at a perfect little ‘50s house painted yellow with a little white picket fence surrounding a garden filled with roses in the front yard. There was a section of brick stairs leading up to the dark wooden door with a golden handle, an elegant entrance. Inside the house, boxes upon boxes of old memories yet to be opened all settled on a grey-carpeted floor. Straight ahead you could see the kitchen with a marble island in the middle. There was a staircase on the left-hand side leading up to the second floor, the floor with all the bedrooms. I walked up the stairs and the first sight to greet my eyes was the open entrance to the attic towering over me in the middle of the hallway. I had never been in the attic before because my grandmother said it was a restricted place, a place where little children should never enter.

An orange ladder led into the mouth of the attic. I climbed the ladder, stepping on the creaky wooden floor. Inside, tightly closed cardboard boxes littered the room. Resting on top of one of the boxes was a brown, worn-out journal. I trod towards the journal, the wood creaking beneath my legs. My fingers landed on the leather brown covering with the letters J.B. engraved in it. I opened the journal, my nimble fingers flipping through the pages. Black ink formed the messy cursive splayed across the pages. I flipped to a random page and a black-and-white photo slipped out, fluttering onto the ground. I gently picked up the photo, holding it by the edges so as to not ruin it with my fingerprints. In the photo was, I assume, my grandmother in her nurse uniform along with another woman who almost looked just like me. I couldn’t recall a moment when grandma had talked about this woman so I didn’t understand the clear resemblance. 

My gaze landed on the page from which the photo had fallen to see if there had been any entries. With only one question in mind, who was that woman, and why did she look like me? I put the photo down on the cardboard box beside me and picked up the journal, squinting to read the scribbles. I’m elated! Finally, after years of hard work, we’ve graduated. Both, Evelyn and I, can finally pursue our dreams of helping those in need. In fact, Evelyn surprised me with this beautiful ring as a gift. We each have one as a sign of our unbreakable sibling bond. Evelyn, that was the girl’s name. She was grandma’s sibling? I skimmed through different pages hoping to find an inkling of information on this new stranger that had somehow managed to occupy my mind in a span of two minutes. My eyes skimmed through the journal, gleaning pieces of information that I kept in the back of my mind. Moments before I reached the end of the journal, I noticed my name under my birthday, February 9, 2007. My granddaughter is finally born and I should feel jubilant, yet when I gaze into her eyes, all I can remember is the death of Evelyn. Of course, she had to be born on the same day as the death of my poor twin. The one who didn’t deserve to die, it should have been me those 65 years ago. It’s not my granddaughter’s fault, but I feel I will never be able to look at her without remembering my guilt, my fear, and my anger. 

I did the math in the back of my head. 2007 subtracted by 65 would be 1942. February 9, 1942. I flipped to the front of the journal, landing in the area of the 1940s. The journal entries were staggered from sometimes being months apart and sometimes being days apart. Reading this journal felt as though I was living my grandmother’s life through her eyes. I felt icky as if I shouldn’t have been reading something such as this, however, I couldn’t help but continue flipping. As I skimmed through the journal, my gaze flicked to the day, 02/11/1942, the closest I could find to the unholy date. My grandmother had written, It was my fault. It should have been me. I should have been the one that was killed, not my poor Evelyn. Those cold-blooded Nazi murderers had no right. She didn’t even have a chance to live fully. We were only 20, only a month away from our birthday. Two men strode up to me with the audacity to say that this never should have happened. Why didn’t they do anything? Why didn’t I do anything? I could almost feel the teardrops that fell onto the paper as my grandmother wrote this. I could hear the scratching of her pen as she mercilessly tore through the paper, her words penetrating through the grain that made the whiteness. 

 I felt cheated and infuriated with my grandmother for blaming me for an injustice that was in no way my fault. I felt rage at this Evelyn girl who messed up my relationship with my only living grandmother, now so close to kissing death. My feelings were so overwhelming I could feel my throat closing up. How was I supposed to know if she never told me? Why didn’t dad tell me about this? Is this why she was close to dad but never close to me? I could feel the air knocked out of my body and I slid to sit on the cold wooden floor. I closed my eyes, resting my elbows on my knees while clasping my hands. I played with my ring without even knowing I was doing so, taking it off my finger, putting it back on, and repeating that action. My thoughts were solely focused on anger toward my grandmother and on the woman I had never met, Evelyn. 

A faint clanging sound caused me to glance down at my finger, realizing that the band had slipped off my finger while I was fiddling with it. The ring was now rolling on the ground, about to fall into one of the many cracks in the wood. I got on all fours trying to chase it before it got lost forever. Clang, clang, clang. The falling happened in slow motion, one minute a golden light was shining in my eyes, and the next moment…gone.

It felt like it took forever for me to process what had just happened. I scrambled across the floor trying to see if I could spot the golden shine of the ring but nothing caught my eye. I could feel my eyes fogging up, but it was as if my brain was restricting me from crying and from letting out my avalanche of emotions. My dad climbed up the attic and I could hear his footsteps on the creaky wood as he walked towards my kneeling figure. He softly rested his nimble hand on my shoulder. I looked up into his eyes and he solemnly mumbled, “It’s time to leave. She’s gone.” His eyes wandered toward the picture of his mother and his aunt and he glanced at me once more before leaving the attic, forcing me to confront my thoughts. 

I slowly picked myself off the ground, picked up the photo of Evelyn and my grandmother and tucked it into my jacket pocket for sake keeping, and turned to exit the attic. I descended the stairs of the house, exited the door, and stopped at the front garden to pick a few white roses for a bouquet. The sky was a cloudy gray and I could almost smell the rain that was impatiently waiting to pour. It was almost as if the sky understood my inner turmoil and was reflecting it outside. I trod towards the car, ready for a silent drive to the hospital filled with grief and misery. 

As expected, the ride was silent. I looked out the window of the passenger seat and noticed that it had started drizzling. Waterdrops slid down the windowpane, cohering with their brethren. The silence in the car was overbearing. I forced myself to look at my dad and in a broken, raw voice asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me I look like grandma’s twin? Forget that, why didn’t you tell me she had a twin? Did you know she hated me for it? It wasn’t even my fault.” My voice grew stronger, more layered, as I began bombarding my father with questions, hoping for a reasonable answer that would calm the growl of anger building in my stomach. My dad’s face morphed into surprise and he flicked his gaze to me through the rear mirror. 

“She loved you,” he replied. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” my voice was so feeble that I didn’t know how he heard it. 

“Evelyn died during World War II in a bomb attack. Your grandmother never recovered from her death, always believing that if she had done better then Evelyn would still be alive. I thought that if you knew that your grandmother blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault then your relationship with her would be inexistent.” his voice was steady and calm as if he were reciting a bedtime story. 

Each and every one of my body cells radiated with indignation, “So you decided to hide it from me? To make me feel that her treatment towards me was because I was a bad person?!” I know it was unfair of me to yell at my dad like this when it was barely even his fault, but I was filled with fury at the injustice occurring within my family life. My eyesight was slowly turning red and my body was trembling so much that one would think I was cruising in Antarctica wearing shorts and a tank top while swimming in the ice-cold waters with the penguins.

Before my dad could answer, the GPS interrupted, “We have arrived at your destination.” He took the intrusion as an escape from the conversation, forcing its end before he was confronted with the next blast of questions which would be coming soon if I could help it. 

We rushed into the hospital as soon as the car was parked and jogged to my grandmother’s room. The hospital door was ajar and through the crack, I could see my mother at her mother-in-law’s bedside. I pushed the door further in and it creaked snapping my mom out of her trance. As soon as her sight fell onto my dad, she stood up and briskly towards him and gave him a big, tight hug. I could hear her faintly whisper into his ear, “I’m sorry.” 

I crept towards my grandmother’s left side, the sound of the flatline penetrating my eardrums. Seeing her like this, lying on a hospital bed, pale and frail with so many tubes invading her personal space, I couldn’t help but be filled with pity. I sat down in the hospital chair next to her and placed her hand on mine. I sat in silence for a few minutes before I elicited a soft sigh of resignation. Resignation to the fact that no matter how angry I was at my grandmother, I would never be able to confront her, and I would never be able to stay mad at her forever. One day, I would forgive her. One day, not today but maybe a few years into the future when I understand her actions better, understand my dad better, and understand myself better. Sadly, I murmured, “You could’ve just told me. Maybe we could have been better.” I gave a tight squeeze to her hand and got up. Before I could forget, I placed my hand into my jacket pocket, enjoying its warmth before taking out the black and white photo of my grandmother and her twin. I lifted my grandmother’s wrinkly, limp hand and softly placed the photo on it before turning to leave.

My dad stood in the middle of the white door frame. My mom softly gestured for me to come over while holding the car keys in her hand. I traipsed toward her, stopping at the front of the room to look at my grandmother once more. It was the calmest and most tranquil I had ever seen her. A familiar shine of light glinted in my eye and my gaze landed on my grandmother’s right hand. Adorning her ring finger was the golden ring I thought I had lost in the attic. Surprise overcame my features and I felt a wash of peace envelop my being. My mom clasped my hand as I turned to the exit, a tear trickling down my cheek. I’ll never be able to fully understand you, but I hope one day I will be able to appreciate you no matter how broken our relationship was. I inhaled and exhaled a deep breath, feeling my heart beat pounding through my veins. For the last time, I stepped out of the hospital room leaving my dad to grieve in silence.