“Mom,” he whispered, his voice thick with a shame that should have belonged to me but somehow didn’t. “Please don’t push this. Valerie just wants her immediate family here.”

The words hung in the air, suspended in the silence. Immediate family.

I looked at him, searching for the child who used to cling to my leg during thunderstorms. I searched for the teenager who wept in my arms when his father died. But that boy was gone. In his place was a man in a crisp button-down shirt who viewed me not as his mother, but as a logistical error he needed to correct.

“I see,” I said. My voice was quieter than I expected. It didn’t crack.

“She’s tired, Mom. She just… she’s never really been comfortable with you. You know that.”

I nodded slowly. I didn’t scream. I didn’t remind him that I was the grandmother. My mother once told me that when the world tries to strip you of your dignity, silence is the only armor you have left.

I gripped the strap of my old brown leather purse—the one my mother gave me when I turned thirty—and I turned around. I walked down that long, white corridor, passing rooms filled with laughter and balloons, passing new grandmothers holding infants with tears of joy in their eyes. I walked past the celebration of life, straight out into the biting February wind of the street, and I didn’t look back.