Spooky Story
Bianca was upset her beloved Nonna would never meet her baby
Iadored my Italian grandmother, Anna. Living up the road from us,
Nonna was always warm and welcoming.
She loved nothing more than getting the family together at her home and cooking delicious dishes for us all.
When her beloved husband Gino died at 85, Nonna was lost without him.
‘I want to be with him,’ she wept.
My then husband Richard and I would visit her often to keep her spirits up.
Then one day, about a year after Gino passed away, Nonna turned to me.
‘You’re pregnant, and you’re having a little girl,’ she said.
‘Oh Nonna,’ I laughed.
I’d been trying to fall pregnant for ages without any luck.
Two days later, I discovered she was right. It was amazing.
‘She knew you were pregnant before you did!’ marvelled Richard.
Nonna was thrilled when I confirmed her prediction.
‘I can’t wait to meet the baby,’ she beamed.
But then, tragically, she was diagnosed with cancer that spread rapidly. The prognosis wasn’t good.
‘I want to be with Gino but I want to meet your baby, too,’ she said, conflicted.
‘I hope I’m still here when she arrives.’
So do I, I thought, wanting her to meet her precious great-grandchild.
But when I was eight months pregnant, she passed over, peacefully at home.
I’d been with her just an hour before she died and I was an absolute wreck.
‘Oh Nonna, I’ll miss you,’ I sobbed.
A month later, following an emergency C-section, little Sienna came into the world.
She wasn’t breathing, but thankfully doctors
saved her.
‘I wish you could meet her, Nonna,’ I said tearfully.
A year later, Richard and I were walking past her old house when we met the new home owners.
‘Would you like to see the place?’ the woman asked.
Showing us around, it looked very different from when Nonna lived there.
They’d even knocked out walls.
Then I realised Sienna had crawled off to another spot in the house.
To my astonishment she was waving and chattering away into thin air.
‘Come here, Sienna,’ I said, but she refused to let me pick her up.
Instead she kept her eyes firmly on one spot and kept babbling at someone I couldn’t see.
Then she started smiling and blowing kisses at them.
Richard and I looked at each other, stunned.
We’d both realised that the place where Sienna was had been Nonna’s bedroom.
And the spot she was fixated on was the exact spot Nonna’s bed had been.
It’s where she passed, I realised, as I tried to hold back tears.
The owners just kept chatting away, oblivious to our shock. Once outside again, I burst into tears.
‘Nonna did meet Sienna after all,’ I wept.
‘I think she did,’ Richard agreed.
When Sienna was two and could talk, she happily told us that a woman often visited her in her bedroom.
I like to think it was
Nonna, checking up on her. And I’m so glad she got to meet Sienna after all.
She kept her eyes on one spot, babbling at someone I couldn’t see