I’ll Tell You, Grandma, How Beautiful the Sea Is

To Kristel, Fernanda, and Antonella, taken too soon, and of course, to my grandmother.

It was cold that November morning in Bari. The relentless north wind had swept away the clouds of the previous days and made the sky clear. I had parked the car in the underground parking lot and was briskly walking towards the entrance of the Policlinico, wrapping myself in my yellow coat. It's never pleasant to go to the hospital, especially when a loved one is admitted.

I had come directly from the airport after a twelve-hour journey and with eight time zones behind me. Just enough time to drop off my luggage at home and rush to the hospital with my heart in my throat.

Arriving at the oncology ward, I ran up the three flights of stairs, hoping to make it in time. Reaching the third floor, I pushed the handle and entered a corridor partially occupied by a cart full of laundry.

"Who are you looking for?"

I turned towards the voice and replied to a chubby nurse with a patient expression.

"Mrs. Teresa Panico, they told me she's in bed 11."

"Oh, you must be the granddaughter, the one who works on cruise ships. It's not visiting hours, but the doctors have already made their rounds and it's quiet. Go ahead. Third room on the right. Mrs. Teresa is not conscious; I hope they told you."

Thanking her, I headed towards the indicated door. I noticed my hands were trembling and my eyes were already burning and misting up.

I entered quietly and saw her. She was alone in the room. I approached.

Her face was half-covered by the oxygen mask, and her body, even thinner than I remembered, was sunken into the bed. Her hair, still dyed blonde with just a few gray streaks, was scattered on that anonymous pillow. Smiling, with eyes full of tears, I stroked her hair.

"Nice move, grandma," I thought. "You, who were always afraid of getting old, are making sure they remember you as always young. Because you are still young, grandma, where are you going? We still have so many things to do, to say… I have so many things to tell you, can you hear me?"

I raised the blind a bit to let her feel the warmth of the morning sun and, sighing, moved the chair closer to the bed.

I sat next to her, gently taking her hand resting on the heavy brown blanket, where the IV needle was inserted.

"I promised you I would tell you about the ship when I got back, I would tell you about this magnificent first embarkation, and here I am. Are you listening to me?"

And watching the liquid slowly drip from the bottle on the stand, I began:

"Sleeping rocked by the lapping of the waves has become a habit now, grandma. It's something that stays imprinted on your soul, you know, and I think it's a magical feeling that accompanies you for the rest of your life.

During the first months, I had a cabin on deck 3, at water level, so when I curled up in that little bed, with the curtain drawn and my face turned towards the bulkhead, it was as if I were a mermaid swimming, accompanying the ship into the next port. At night, despite the noise of the engines—the Riviera is an old ship now—I could distinctly hear the water against the hull and fall asleep to the sound of the waves.

You always told me that you would have liked to go to sea, but the only experience you have of ships is watching, from time to time, from the villa's terrace, those entering or leaving the port. Sometimes merchant ships, sometimes ferries to Greece or Albania, more rarely passenger ships. For you, the concept of a cruise, as it is understood today, almost never existed.

We have always been fortunate that the sea was a decorative element of our home. So close to it, as if included in the marine landscape.

The smell of the sea, brought by the wind that puffed up the curtains like sails, was part of our home and permeated the walls.

In my memories as a child and then as a melancholic teenager, the sea always has a place of honor, with the salt whitening the fixtures and bringing to us distant scents and sorrows.

When there was the war in the former Yugoslavia, for example, do you remember? Sometimes I would stop to look at the horizon from the window or the shore. Devouring newspapers, always thirsty for news, sometimes it seemed so far away, and sometimes so close that it almost felt like I could hear the echo of the snipers' shots brought to me by the Adriatic current, and I shared the fear of those unknown people, whom I imagined hiding in damaged and dark houses.

After all, it's always been like this. The sea brings people closer and pushes them away, doesn't it?

It seemed incredible that on the other side others like us were experiencing such a great tragedy, while in Italy we were there, in deafening silence, so helplessly watching the backwash, doing nothing.

That sea for me meant that loved-hated house and perhaps for someone else it meant life and freedom.

Or like that time when the sea vomited all those people, our neighbors, do you remember, grandma? All those strangers who, like a tsunami, flooded the port, the streets, and the quiet everyday life. Clinging to those tubs, the "Albanians," who later became brothers, invoked only water and bread, and still burning with salt, we crammed them into open-air camps, under the August sun, and the anger that spread echoed the vacation boredom of most.

Desperation on one side and salvation on the other. Joy and sorrow. One shore life and the other death.

So, later, complicit in the destinies of the world, when the opportunity presented itself—you know my dream has always been to travel—I seized the moment and set off on the friendly sea, to discover if there could be greater serenity on distant shores.

I embarked on one of those floating hotels that are so fashionable today, but luckily, for my first experience, they sent me aboard an old-style ship, which with its wooden decks made you think of ancient voyages, full of hopes and dreams.

Grandma, you don't know how beautiful it is to be a drop in that sea, to rock on the waves or, despite the seasickness, to be part, tossed and proud, of the fury of a storm."

Wonderful to Enter Certain Ports: the history-filled walls of Valletta, the bridge in Lisbon and the monument to its navigators, the navigation of the Bosphorus, like a journey through time with the thousand lights of Istanbul, the passage of the Strait of Messina, with Scylla and Charybdis watching our parade. Or approaching Genoa, beautiful and majestic from the sea, with the city lights of the evening fading and dying in the water and the Lantern acting as a comet. Seeing the land from another point of view, new, unusual, both that of those arriving and those departing, of those greeting and those who often said goodbye.

Grandma, I would take you at night to the bow, on the highest deck. On the Riviera, there is an external tongue, which you reach by climbing all the stairs, a small extension, right above the bridge, where at most only you and I can stand. In the dark, at night, it is as if you are swallowed by the sky, and you are one with the sea and the sky together. If you turn around, look ahead and leave even the ship's lights below, you can ride the stars. The warm summer wind fills your hair, and you could stay there forever and thus understand why it is so beautiful to go to sea.

Grandma, what are you doing here attached to these machines? Come with me to see the dolphins that accompany the ship out of Dubrovnik or the grandeur of St. Mark's Square entering and leaving Venice, as we slowly navigate the Giudecca. Do you hear my voice? Can you at least see all this with the eyes of my memory? Can I make you imagine it? Make you… live it?

As soon as you get better, I'll take you on board, if you feel like it, to verify that I'm telling the truth, that the wind of navigation smells of adventure and freedom.

My dear grandma, how beautiful to think of you elegant while dancing, with grandpa looking at you with his love made of poetry, in the aft lounge after the gala dinner, smiling and radiant as you have always been, with the trail of white foam visible from the window behind the band. The musician friends play your song, do you hear it? "… Distance, you know, is like the wind, that makes you forget those who do not love…" and the notes mix into a new melody with your funny laugh, and you twirl beautiful and light like a butterfly in flight, gentle and rustling in your evening dress, like its wing beat.

But now you are here, motionless, with heavy breathing amplified by the machines that instead play a rhythm that smells of death. Don't leave me here powerless to watch you go away! Then take me to the world where you are now, where you are living now, that world that I imagine so beautiful that you don't want to come back here to me, perhaps made of the same sea that I tell you about and therefore irresistible…

If you are happy there, grandma, I will understand, as you understood me when I went away, far from the noise of the mind, from the confusion of conflicts and the pain of this disease that eats you inside and is a metaphor for life itself.

And I still see you young, you know, with that silver thread you now have among your blonde hair, giving a kiss in the moonlight on the highest deck, one with the sky, while I am down below, one with the sea, giving the same kiss on a crew deck that has a slight rancid smell of what is the backstage of that glittering world.

A cruise ship is not all gold and glitter. It is also garbage, waste, sweat, and tears of children left in distant countries waiting for the money from the other side of the sea, essential for the survival of nostalgic seafarers' families.

That silent kiss, mine, without hope for tomorrow, aware that each embarkation is a life of its own, each ship a dimension of its own, both outside the world and the whole world known at that moment. A cosmopolitan universe, without barriers, borders, races, religions. A perfect commune, carefree yet melancholic, where laughter, sharing, and thoughts of families left ashore are the common denominator. The Italian sailor, the Argentine receptionist, the French hostess, the Peruvian waiter, the Chilean dancer, and whoever has more nationalities, let them add. Many different languages and one at the same time, that of friendship. Forever tight and indissoluble because made of the same experiences and the coexistence of endless embarkations, in a succession of days all the same yet different.

You would have liked this world, grandma, or would you have preferred being a passenger in an evening dress, without the smell or sweat stains, with your proud kiss, exposed, shouted to the world of those who have that same world in their hand and can do what they want with it?

We work a lot, you know, often until late at night, and then on the Riviera, we gather up at the deserted buffet to drink tea, play, laugh, and tell each other about our lives and the day just passed. Sometimes I still had on the excursion shirt, dusted with the sand of the pyramids, tired but with the sparkling eyes of someone who does the job they love.

I would have introduced them to you, grandma, my friends, those who shared the waves of that sea with me.

But now you are here, and I don't know if you hear me, if you will hug me again or leave me forever, leaving me with the memory of the smell of the sauce on festive days, which I seem to smell even here, mixing with the familiar smell of the medicines from grandpa's pharmacy.

In this unknown bed, he is not here with his Sunday morning fairy tales or the echo of children's laughter and the meows and barks of the house's puppies.

There is only you, already halfway beyond this life, at the moment made of painful reality, of memories and stories scented with salt and my hope of being able to take you one day, with me, to the sea."