'Bye, Nan. Thanks for everything.'

Liam Drew's grandmother became ill, at 80, just before he moved to the US. He knew their farewell might be permanent – so he wrote her a letter, and delivered it by hand.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/13/liam-drew-grandmother-letter

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I put the kettle on to boil and took two well-worn mugs from a cupboard filled with unused china cups and saucers. Dropping the teabag into the teapot, I tensed, trying not to let my sadness overcome me. The tight, sniffling inhalation that escaped could not fail to be recognised for what it was but, afterwards, the silence continued untouched.

Throughout all my memories, tea-making was a part of my grandmother's kitchen. In casual celebration or in a family crisis, or just because that's what we always did, putting the kettle on had always brightened this room. Normally, I would be seated, chatting, at the circular table behind me but today I had sought diversion in this brief process. I tried to focus on the cups and spoons, or to contemplate the pristine work surfaces or to stare outwards at the immaculate but plain backyard, any possible distraction in a bid for a calm that would not come.

In a few hours I would depart my home town for London and from there, in three days, leave England for New York. Today was the final farewell in a chain of goodbyes that had stretched from Christmas through the whole of January. Again, I had pushed back the last visit to my Nan.

I knew she was excited for me. When I'd rung from Manhattan between job interviews the previous summer, she had said keenly how she wished she were there. Her desire for us to live fully had been a constant in my life. In discussing contemporary life, she would dismiss any pessimism or suspicion saying that she would "give anything to be young again like these boys and have the opportunities they do". With acute empathy, my Nan, rarely straying beyond her own limited routines, would live vicariously through the adventures of her children and grandchildren. To her, New York was a movie set and the thought of her grandson living there thrilled her. Or, at least, it had.

Since I had moved away to university, my visits had always begun with a happy routine. As Nan approached the frosted glass of her front door, inspecting the male outline there, I would call, "Hi, Nan. It's me." And through the pane I would see her silhouette do a little jig before she quickly turned the key and I bent to embrace her loving smile. On this day, I had called out brightly through the glass but the laboured movement of the figure beyond was lethargic, her body unable to express her usual joy. Her face when the door opened was heartbreakingly unmoved by my arrival, excitement beyond her.

Turning to place the two mugs of tea on the table, I was confronted again by the unfamiliarity of Nan's appearance. Her clothes, still immaculately presented, hung loosely from her frame. The skin on her face had slackened and she stared somewhere I could not see. This was what had marked the previous two months, a growing absence.

Clearly in constant pain, she rarely complained for fear of burdening others, but it ate into her engagement with the world; conversation would subside into nothingness and she would stare into the distance. I had for a period felt that she might be gazing with her mind's eye at happy recollections. But today, as the undrunk tea cooled in long silent pauses, it was impossible for me to imagine that happiness lay wherever she was looking.

As winter had progressed and Nan's health declined, there had been much discussion of how spring might bring some remission. Did we believe it or was it simply something to cling to while avoiding other possibilities? Regardless, I had ended the letter I had written to Nan on the train from London two nights previously with my hope that the advent of spring would see her feeling better.

I had started writing the moment the train left Paddington station, and scrawled for the entire two-hour journey; the only thing slowing me down was the need to ensure my scribbling was legible to tired, 80-year-old eyes. The ease with which one thought ran into another, meant that the sombre need to write was mixed with pleasure in seeing truths come forth so readily. I recounted my earliest memories of her, and the flickers I can recall of Granddad, how it remained always a pleasure to see her, and that I was so lucky to have never felt any obligation in our grandmother-grandson relationship, just the simple pleasure of love and friendship. I told her how her selflessness only ever made it a joy to give back to her. I said what a pleasure it had been to dance drunkenly and uninhibitedly with her best friend, my mum, at my leaving party. I wrote about the fun I'd had travelling with her to Paris, on her only trip beyond the UK, and told her of my aspirations for New York.

Sensing the letter in my pocket at the kitchen table, I felt glad I had written it. I had wondered on the train why I didn't just tell her how I felt. But those days of free-flowing conversation seemed distant, those effortless collusions that had left both of us feeling a little self-satisfied by the special bond we had.

"Shall we move to the living room? Perhaps you'll feel more comfortable in there?" I asked.

"All right, dear," she murmured, and we moved slowly, arm-in-arm down the hallway.

Over Christmas, an anticipation of Nan's passing had hung miserably over the festivities; none of us could bring ourselves to talk about the possibility that she might not be with us much longer. It had felt disrespectful. Mum told me later that the only time that Nan's tough coating had opened was late one night, when she had said: "I'm not ready yet."

Now sitting with Nan in her living room, I chatted haltingly about New York, in the shadow of the goodbye that must be said. There would be another goodbye three weeks later, when I would kiss her unconscious forehead as she lay in a hospital bed, after I'd rushed home from my new life across the Atlantic. But, for now, my leaving was a concrete scenario that I have come to see as my good fortune. For it was my departure that forced us to say the awkward words that almost certainly neither of us would have been strong enough to have uttered otherwise.

I got up to leave and despite my insistence that she stay seated, Nan rose too. I took the letter from my pocket and handed it to her, saying: "I just wanted to write a few things down."

The weightiness of the paper, and thus of all there was to say, was acknowledged at last in a familiar knowing look, a half-smile. She moved to her TV, where she put her hand on the photograph of me grinning in my graduation robes, "I say good morning to you every day."

I smiled the warmest of smiles.

"Bye, Nan, thanks for everything you've done for me."

She looked from the picture to me and said the last words we ever exchanged face-to-face, "Thank you for all the happiness you've given me."