Louise O'Neill: The irony of getting sick at Lourdes, the place most people go to for healing, is not lost on me

It was my grandmother’s anniversary this week. I keep looking at the calendar, remembering the same date last year. Saying, “this was the day she first took a turn”, and “it was today the doctor told us she was going to die”. Remember? Remember?

The long hours sitting by her bedside, watching her slowly slip away from us. Cups of tea and red-eyes, teeth sticky with crumbs of biscuits that you’re not hungry for, but you eat anyway, just for something to do. The delirious conversations at 4am, circling around, saying nothing. She would wake occasionally and she would ask when she could go home. That was all she wanted, in those last few hours. To be back in her own house, to sleep in her own bed.