I Found A Strange Object in My Grandmother’s Cupboard Which Looks Weird

It was a dull Saturday morning and I went to see my grandmother. She had a very old brick house nearly a hundred years old, with creaky floors, and walls that I thought must have talked the olden times. I had been seeing more of her recently as she was getting aged and little things would prove hard to her-going up and down the stairs, lugging of heavy pots, bending over to get to low cabinets. She made no complaints, but I knew it was in her eyes and in the slowness of her movements.

On that day I chose to assist her in the cleaning of her cupboard. It was an ancient wooden one with scratches upon its doors such as those can left by years of use alone. It contained clothes, photographs, small trinkets, old kitchen things that she did not use. When I was moving things about, I discovered one thing that was out of the ordinary before all the linen was folded up, and pushed way back.

It was metallic and heavy, and took the shape of something I could not instantly know. It was a long one, shiny, pointed at the top, and old but well preserved. My fingers wavered, then I reached in and drew it out and laid it on the table. It resembled a big bullet, or, perhaps, a shell. My heart got to beating faster since it did not belong in some regular cupboard with scarves and blouses.

I think my grandmother’s eyes froze when she saw it. Her frail hands which were interlaced in folding towels froze in mid-air. Her eyes widened and for an instant, she was young again, as if the object had transported her to another era. She sat down beside me, slowly, her shoulders weighed down by memory. “Where… where are you getting that from?” she breathed.

“Inside the cupboard, I said. “Behind the scarfs. What is it, Grandma?” asked a young boy. Her fingers stretched towards it, shaking, yet delicately, as if it were valuable and also something to be feared. She let out a deep, despairing sigh and her eyes clouded over with tears. “I dreaded you would ever have to see this,” she whispered.

I drew nearer, in expectation. Long after gazing at the curious object she said again. Now this, she said, is a shell casing out of the war. It was that of my brother.” I stared in surprise. I had not even known that she had a brother. She never once spoke of him. I believed I was familiar with most of her life narratives on how she met my grandfather, how she used to work as a girl in a bakery, how she raised her kids in such difficult times. This was quite new, however. In her hands she clutched the shell and her voice trembled as she started to relate the story to me.

I had a brother, she answered, his name was Daniel. He was two years senior to me. We were brought up on a small village in hard times. We had not much food, not much money, but we had one another. He was older, taller, bigger and protective of me. At the time of the beginning of the war, he was nineteen. He did not care to go, nor did he feel that he had any particular wish to do so. His take was that it was his responsibility to fight, to defend our family, our country, our future.”

She stopped, and the tears fell on her wrinkled cheeks. I do recall that day that he left. He embraced me so hard as though he had some inkling that it would be the final time. He handed me his scarf and said that I should not lose it. I never saw him since.” She cringed and her voice broke, and she brought the shell casing to her chest.

She went on, Months afterwards we got the letter. It told that his unit had been attacked and he did not make it. My mother dropped to the ground sobbing. My father was trying to be strong and I could feel the pain shattering him. And me… It seemed to me I had been ripped apart in half. Daniel was not only my brother, he was my best friend, my protector. It was never the same afterwards in life.” She spoke and the room was heavy. I stared at her and I could see the girl which she used to be and the woman who had experienced this sorrow since decades in her face.

I indicated the object. But where did you get this?. She tipped her fingers over it. One of the soldiers that had fought together with Daniel returned to the village following the war. He came across me, and gave me this shell casing. The person said it was discharged in the fight that Daniel was killed. He told us that Daniel was a courageous person, that he fought to the last moment. The soldier handed this to me to remind me of this so that I never forget. And I never did, believe me.”

Through the tears she smiled a little. I hid it since I did not want your mother or you to develop the same kind of pain. I wanted you to see me as a happy grandmother and not as a sister who had lost her brother the most horrible way.”

As she spoke my heart broke. My grandmother had always appeared to me as a powerful, kind and patient person. And I had never imagined the amount of grief that she had in her. And it was something more than a piece of metal: that heavy, odd object was a memory about her brother, a bit of love and loss in time. I experienced a lump in my throat and I put my arm on her shoulders. I wished I might have seen him, I said.

She nodded. He would have liked you. He never wanted to be an uncle. There are moments when I look at you that I see a bit of him. The kindness of your eyes the same.” I cried as well because of her words. It was the first time I felt a kinship not only to her, but to a man I had never known, yet who had been the shaping force in her life, and in a way in mine.

Later that night when I was leaving her house all I could think about was the shell casing. It was not only a glance of war or death. It made me remember how strong love can be, how strong the memories are even when the thing being remembered is not, and how the smallest things can hold the most weight.

My grandmother had kept her pain inside secretly all those decades without ever mentioning it but she managed to keep her brother alive in that secret box in her cupboard. And by telling me the story she was relinquishing it to the next generation, so that Daniel would never really be forgotten.

The most incredible things are sometimes the most dramatic. I also understood that day that behind the smile and the soft laugh of my grandmother was a heart that had borne the sorrow of so many years. However, I also found out that she was resilient enough to create a life in spite of it, to love her children, to raise her grandchildren and to continue laughing even when her heart was broken.

And when I thought of his sister Daniel, the young man who never returned, I vowed that I would deliver his story as well. The weird shell casing of the cupboard would no longer be a mere antique- it will be a linkage between the past and the present, between the suffering of my grandmother and my realization.