My Nana passed away on Saturday, October 11^th. She was 95.

I knew that she wouldn’t be here too much longer after Pop-Pop passed.

“You have to let me die first because I can’t live without you,” she said to Pop-pop the summer I went to visit them in Florida when I was 15. It shocked me to the point of tears. What do you mean either one of them would die? It was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Neither one of them could die because how would I live without them?

And then the unthinkable happened.

First Pop-pop. Then Nana three months later. The end of that generation of our family. The end of the long conversations where I’d ask them questions about their childhoods, their parents, their younger years. No more of Pop-pop’s laugh or Nana’s giggle.

For a long time when I called Nana and asked how she was doing, she’d say, “Not well. This might be the last time you talk to me.”

I spent a lot of time crying after our phone calls until I realized that she was dying the way most of the Italian women in my life have been known to die. Slowly. Loudly. And, really, not at all.

Nana and Pop-pop were a huge part of my life growing up. Vacations through New England, to Hershey Park, to Woodstock. I lived with them for two years after my parents divorced and my dad moved back in with them.

We spent every weekend together. And every Tuesday they’d take me to the mall to get Wendy’s for dinner and to my dance class. They’d walk around the mall while they waited for me to be done.

Dinner was always on the table at 5pm without fail. Laundry was washed, folded, and put away for you. The fridge was always stocked with your favorite treats.

Nana was good at being the butt of her son’s jokes and loved making fun of Pop-pop to get a rise out of him. His reactions always made her giggle mischievously. We exchanged letters when they moved to Florida. She had beautiful handwriting. And she was an excellent cook and baker.

But she was also no nonsense. On more than one occasion I was told, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” (I was crying because I’d stayed the night at their house and was sad that I had to leave. Hahahaha) But she loved us. All of us. And her and Pop-pop would do anything for us. All you had to do was ask.

They were the glue that held our family together, and when they left for Florida, I was devastated.

During Covid, I started writing my first novel, a story about an Italian family in 1940’s New Jersey. Mainly, I wanted to be surrounded by a big Italian family, and I used my Nana’s stories as inspiration for the book. How her mother wouldn’t teach her Italian because she was an “American girl” and “American girls don’t need to know how to speak Italian”. So, she’d sneak off to church before school, to the mass that was held in Italian to learn the language. Really my Nana wanted to learn Italian because it was the language her parents whispered their secrets to each other in.

How when her sister died at 34, she stopped going to church because she was angry at God.

A week or so ago, I was on the phone with my uncle. We spent a few hours sharing stories and memories and laughing. I told him something my dad said to me when I was younger.

“I wonder who you would have been if Nana and Pop-pop had been your parents instead of me.”

I told my uncle this. “But they did,” he said. “Your stories and memories are proof of how much impact they had on your life.”

They gave me a solid foundation. I hadn’t even realized how much of my life is because of them. But when I look at all the pieces, I see them in everything. In all of it. It was a gift to be their granddaughter.

If there is a heaven, and I think there is, I hope they’re sharing a meal and stories with the loved ones that passed before them. I hope Nana got to hug her sister and her parents.

And when it’s my time, I hope to see them again.