Rain tapped softly against the hospital window, slow and steady, like the world was trying to be gentle with us.
Two weeks earlier, the doctors had told us my grandmother did not have much time left.
“Maybe a week,” one of them said quietly. “Two, if we’re lucky.”
After that, I spent every day beside her hospital bed We looked through old photo albums, talked about people I barely remembered, and pretended we were simply passing time instead of counting what little of it remained.
That evening, Grandma sat propped against her pillows with an old photo album open across her lap. The pages were yellowed, the corners curled from age, and every photograph seemed to carry a life she had once lived before I ever knew her.
Then she stopped turning the pages.
Her fingers rested on an old black-and-white picture.
A boy stood beside her, smiling like he had just heard the best joke in the world.
Grandma smiled too.
Not the tired smile she gave nurses.
Not the polite one she gave visitors.
This one was different.
Soft.
Young.
Full of something I had never seen on her face before.
“That was him,” she whispered.
I leaned closer. “Who?”
“The boy I loved in school.”
I blinked. “Loved? Before Grandpa?”
“Long before.”
For the first time in my life, my grandmother told me about Henry.
“We were fifteen,” she said, tracing the boy’s face with trembling fingers. “He carried my books home every afternoon, even when I told him I had two perfectly good arms.”
I laughed softly, though my throat felt tight.
“He was stubborn,” she continued. “And kind. He could make me laugh until my stomach hurt.”
Rain tapped against the glass as she stared down at the photograph.
“We danced together at prom,” she whispered. “A slow song at the very end of the night, after almost everyone else had gone home.”
“What song?”
“Unchained Melody.”
Her eyes glistened.
“I still hear it sometimes when I close my eyes.”
I swallowed hard.
“What happened to him?”
Her smile faded around the edges.
“Life happened,” she said quietly. “After graduation, our families moved to different countries. We wrote letters for a while, then they slowly stopped coming.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She looked at the photo again.
“I told myself he forgot me.”
“Do you think he did?”
She stayed quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “And I think that hurt more than anything.”
I squeezed her hand.
“Did you love Grandpa?”
“Oh yes,” she said immediately. “With all my heart.”
“But?”
“But Henry was the first.”
A small, sad smile touched her mouth.
“The first love lives in a little corner of you that never quite turns off the lights.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them.
Grandma looked at the photo again.
“I still remember our last dance,” she said. “I think about it all the time.”
