It's something to do with her lungs. All I know is that she doesn't like hugs, or rather hugs squeeze all the air out of her body and make her feel like she's drowning. This is a feeling I understand, as I watch her slowly die. That's a secret we're keeping from each other, though. She pretends she's feeling a bit better than yesterday and I pretend to believe her.

She tells me that the oxygen makes her feel like she's carrying a scuba tank around with her. I have never seen my nonna at the beach, though I imagine her between the waves, weightless brown curls stretching across the Indian Ocean as she floats on her back.

I ask her if she's ever been? She tells me that she liked seeing the beaches on Rotto, but that she doesn't know how to swim. It's easy, I tell her. You just kind of move your arms like a windmill and kick. She laughs. When you're feeling a bit better, I say, I'll take you to the beach. She smiles. But I can tell by the way she squeezes my hand that we both know one day soon I'll walk in to find she's gone. Gone-gone, not just bed-empty-gone, though I'd rather that.

I'd rather the nurses call and tell us that they've lost her. Literally, not figuratively. I'd rather turn on the TV to find the news reporting a wild Italian woman broke out of hospital to brave the early morning swell at Mullaloo, oxygen tank abandoned in the dunes. I'd rather watch her stretching her arms like a windmill, hands slicing through the crisp, blue water as she turns her head to breathe.