7
“
How are you feeling, Grandmother? Would you like anything?”
“
No, my dear, I’m fine,” she says. Her voice is weak. “I am sorry
you are stuck beside the bed of an old, sick woman. How are you
amusing yourself?”
I explain that I’m trying to write down the various stories she
has told me. Her eyes close again. A few minutes later she opens
them again.
“
I have a story for you, Lily, one that I have not told anyone, not
even your mother. It is time to pass along this story. It is a story
my grandmother told me, and her grandmother told her.”
“
I would love to hear it! But I don’t want you to get too tired,” I
say.
For the first time since we arrived, I see a bit of a
twinkle
in
Grandmother’s eyes.
“
Telling this story may actually be good
medicine
for me,” she
says.
“
Just as you are named Lily after me, I was named Lily after my
grandmother. And her grandmother was named Lily as well. This
story is about what happened to that first Lily.”
My grandmother began her story this way, “I am very old and I
do not have many days left to live. I must tell you the story about
what really happened to Frédéric Chopin’s heart.”
