Before she passed away, Grandma called me over when we were alone. Her voice was weak, barely a whisper:

— Remove my photo from the gravestone exactly one year later. Not sooner. Will you promise?

I tried to comfort her, to push away the dark thoughts:

— Grandma, don’t say that… you still have time left…

But she just smiled faintly, closed her eyes, and repeated:
— Promise me…

I promised. That very night, Grandma left this world.

A year later, I had almost forgotten her strange request. But a promise is a promise. At her grave, I easily loosened the screws, and as soon as I took out the picture, I screamed:

— This can’t be real…

Continued in the first comment

On the back of Grandma’s portrait was a hidden, faded photograph of a young woman — vibrant, smiling brightly, in a fitted dress standing in front of an old house.

She looked painfully like me. But wearing old-fashioned clothes. I took a picture of the gravestone and went to Grandpa for answers. He seemed like he had been expecting the questions.

When I showed him the photo, he smiled with a trace of sadness:

— That’s your grandmother. That’s what she looked like when we first met. A real beauty — like someone from the movies.

— But why did she hide it behind her recent portrait?

Grandpa sighed, paused for a moment, and then said:

— She always worried about how she looked. Especially when she got older. She’d often look in the mirror and say, “Why does no one ever put young pictures on gravestones? Are we meant to be remembered only as old?”
Then she’d add, “But if I put a young photo there, people will think I’m a vain old woman…”

I smiled through tears. Everything made sense.
She just wanted me — at least once, a year later when the pain had softened — to see her as she truly was. Beautiful. Alive. Happy.