“Has she always been like that with you?”
He kicked at a pile of leaves.
“Yeah, I guess so. I just didn’t see it clearly until now. Nothing I did was ever quite good enough unless it made her look good too.”
We both knew, at that moment, that neither of us owed her anything.
Weeks passed.
I built a relationship with my brother, the one thing Mom had tried to keep from me. And she kept calling, sent messages, and even showed up at my door again.
But this time, when she knocked, I didn’t answer. She had made her choice 22 years ago.
And now, I had made mine.
On what would have been Grandma’s birthday, Jason and I met at her grave. We placed her favorite yellow daisies and stood in silence.
“I wish I’d known her better,” Jason said. “Really known her.”
“She would have loved you,” I told him.
“Not because you’re perfect, but because you’re you.”
As we walked back to our cars, something caught my eye across the cemetery. A familiar figure stood watching us.
Our mother.
Jason saw her too and tensed beside me.
“We don’t have to talk to her,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, we don’t.”
We got into our cars and drove away, leaving her standing alone among the gravestones.
In the end, family isn’t always who gives birth to you.
Sometimes it’s who sees you and chooses to stay. Grandma chose me. And in her final act of love, she gave me back the brother I never knew.
Some wounds never heal completely.
But around the scars, new life can still grow.
