When my sister Alicia died at 17, I was just six. My memories of her were fragments—her laugh in the kitchen, the smell of her strawberry lip gloss, her fingers painting tiny flowers on her nails. Years later, at 12, I found her silver ring with a blue stone. It fit perfectly, and it became my most treasured link to her.

For nine years, that ring sat safely in a velvet box on my dresser. It wasn’t about jewelry—it was proof I loved and remembered her. But at a family lunch, my brother Daniel proposed to his girlfriend Rose with that very ring. My heart stopped as I watched him slip it onto her hand, the ring I’d guarded for nearly a decade.

When I asked for it back, Daniel told me I barely knew Alicia, that I was being selfish. My parents sided with him, calling it “just a ring.” Desperate, I met with Rose, who listened quietly as I told her what the ring meant. Without hesitation, she slipped it off her finger and handed it back, saying it was never truly hers.

Now, my family calls me selfish. But when I look at this ring, I don’t see silver and stone—I see Alicia, and the love we shared in the short time we had. Maybe I was young, maybe my grief doesn’t make sense to them. But this ring is mine, and through it, my sister will never be forgotten.