The final words to my dying grandmother which I’ll never forget

My grandma was dying the first time I read her my writing. She was dying but looked fabulous. My cousin arranged a service so she wouldn’t die without her nails done. That would be a tragedy. She wore her pink lipstick too, for a while. She gossiped with the nurses, and relished being their favourite. The most fun patient, the only one in hospice barely dying.

We laughed that she would be the first person ever to be released from hospice. That she’d never die, not even there. Credit: ISTOCK

She told us all the happenings, who was newly brought in, who hadn’t made it, everything she overheard. We all visited her constantly, the whole extended family, me dragging my two boys on the hour-long drive, battling their carsickness each time. How she bragged to the nurse that my older one was already potty-trained. Incredible, isn’t it? Though he wasn’t ahead of anyone, and perfectly on time.

She loved the attention. We laughed that she would be the first person ever to be released from hospice. That she’d never die, not even there. Someone took a picture of her with all the nurses, beaming ear to ear. My son brought his doctor kit, and she let him listen to her heart, telling him she was all better when he was through. So many pictures of her smiling in that hospice bed, with the view her sons overpaid for of the beach that she loved. Toddler artwork taped to the windows, flowers in vases, photos in frames, someone always bringing cookies and sweets. We filled her water, sat at the edge of her bed, brought her a straw, held her hand. She loved hospice. She loved every bit of her life.

My grandma was Gram to me, and Gigi, for “Great Grandma”, to my boys. One summer beach day years earlier, I was breastfeeding my newborn oldest after a swim, and he popped off and puckered, sputtering, and we realised I had basically fed him breastmilk with a salted rim. She and I both laughed so hard we cried. How I miss her laugh, the way she tipped her head back and let it fill her body.

She was so proud of me, even though she had never read a word of my writing. Even though I hadn’t been signed by a literary agent. There was no book deal then, no bylines or even a published short story. Just a pile of rejections and a hope that one day it would be different. She followed me on Instagram, in her 80s but never to be left behind. She saw the posts I shared about the writing life, the persistence and rounds of rejections and revising, the pictures of me at the breakfast nook in my kitchen, working in the pre-dawn and late nights. She would like and comment on each one. She was on Instagram just to brag that she was on Instagram, to say, I saw that on Instagram when asked. She believed it would happen someday, as I did.

But that someday happened after she was gone. She died months before I spoke to my agent for the first time. I got emotional on that call, when she asked what inspired me to write a love story like this. Even though my novel isn’t based on my grandparents, I said, my grandparents had a beautiful love story, and I choked up, and apologised, saying, I’m sorry, I actually just lost my grandmother. But it couldn’t be true, she couldn’t have gone before all this. She had to see my agent sign me, the book deal that followed, the UK deal and the 19 translations to come, the film agents pitching it to Hollywood – oh, how the hospice nurses would have loved all that. When foreign deals began to roll in she would have asked, what about Italy because she was a first generation Italian-American. Not that she even spoke it. She wasn’t taught by her parents; they wanted her to assimilate. But she’d read the Italian version and pretend to understand.

I read her some pages during those hospice days when it was still a printed Word document, sections about the beach we both loved, the place that was ours. The beach that inspired the book. And I told her I named the beach Bernard Beach because her middle name was Bernadette and my grandfather’s was Bernard; a funny coincidence. Because my love of the beach was theirs, and my love of love was because they showed me how.

I told her I set the family on Sandstone Lane because I typed her maiden name Sansone, and it autocorrected, and because it was a beach town, it stuck. And I read her the parts inspired by the childhood she had given me, the cottage she and my grandfather made our summer home, the place a revolving door of cousins and aunts and uncles and laughter and yelling over pasta dinners after sun-soaked days together. She loved the title, The Days I Loved You Most. She repeated, how beautiful, Amy, and we both cried.

She did die there, peacefully, willingly. She was ready to see my grandfather again, she said; he had been waiting so long. My husband and I got to go in between the rounds of visitors at the end, and we held her hands and told her there had never been anyone better. We kissed her cheeks, and told her again and again how much she was loved.

The Days I Loved You Most (Bloomsbury) by Amy Neff is out now.

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