Every year, I visited my grandmother, who was placed in the mental hospital because she saw hallucinations. I always hate visiting the hospital where the lighting was dazzling white and there was a gloomy atmosphere like early morning when a storm is approaching. My grandmother didn't talk much except when she was hallucinating and she started shaking. She had calluses on her hands and wrinkles on her forehead and her eyes were dull and gloomy like a sky when it is cloudy. I've never seen the corners of her mouth turn into a full smile. I never enjoyed these trips but my parents wanted me to visit my grandmother at least once a year “because it's the right thing to do.” My parents refer to my grandmother as a lost cause and always spoke to my grandmother with pity and shame. Also, the hospital never referred to my grandmother's name as Maria; she was always patient #2561.

I sighed as they entered the hospital and walked to my grandmother's bedroom where I was sitting in her chair with her eyebrows furrowed, painted furiously on a canvas. When my grandmother heard our footsteps, she slowly turned her head upward and smiled slightly. My parents tried to start a conversation and asked how she was doing but my grandmother didn't answer. Instead, she started to shake and whispered “the vines, the vines, they're trapping me” and she pointed in the air as she hugged her shoulders. In frustration, my parents left the room, shaking their heads at her. Normally, I would like to stop too but it was my first time watching my grandmother paint.

Tears fell like rain on the tarp that was in her lap. After some time, I worked up the courage to ask what she was painting. I didn't wait for a response, so I was surprised when she called me by my mother's name, Lucia. Her eyes met mine and she told me that I look exactly like my mother. In those short moments, the sadness clouding her eyes receded from her and were a beautiful hazel brown. I know that if the sun hit her eyes they would turn to gold, but these windowless walls would never allow the sun to reach her. With hesitant and hesitant hands, my grandmother approached me and gently touched my hands. I feel like the world stopped as she curled her fingers around mine. It was my first time feeling my grandmother's hands; They were soft and warm and so delicate that I was afraid that if I moved my hands from hers I would break hers.

Then my grandmother lifted the painting from her and I gasped. Careful brush strokes formed a painting of my grandmother trapped in her chair in the same bedroom with vines wrapped around her. The expression was one of pain and anguish and the colors on the canvas seemed to scream. Her hand was still on mine and tears began to form in my eyes because it dawned on me that my grandmother was not patient #2561 but a person whose voice and feelings never leave the room. I thought in disbelief because my parents and I never listened to my grandmother, we never allowed her hands to reach our hands through her brush strokes.

When she looked up from the painting to her face, she once again whispered, “The vines, the vines, they're trapping me.”