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Sometimes we get back so much more than we give. Visiting Bubby was like that.

My great-grandmother’s blue eyes burned bright even as the candle of her life was waning. Late in life she made aliyah to marry a second time around. Bubby still dared to hope and dream and give when most people her age would resign themselves to dreams unfulfilled and turn the pillow the other way.

Bubby went to live in the seaside town of Netanya. She loved the Land. She would inhale deeply inviting us to sniff the milk and honey in the breeze. I never smelled either but she said she did and was determined that her last breath be a milk-and-honey breath.

It was not to be. After two decades of a wonderful life together her second husband passed on. My grandmother had outlived two husbands; would she hope and dream still?

I imagined she would but then the Alzheimer’s that had been a niggling presence in her life took hold. Bubby had to return to England to live in a nursing home.

As her body waned her spirituality came through. But still it was hard to watch her memory fail to see Bubby struggling with the simplest of tasks.

I never knew how long a visit would be. Some days she would caress my fingers in her translucent hands and I would listen to stories of the war of life in London’s East End of Israel for hours. Other days after a peck on the cheek and ten minutes of chit-chat she was wrung out and disoriented. I couldn’t stop coming though. This was my great-grandmother and I knew I was touching the end of an era.

My mother arranged a rota of visitors so that every day Bubby saw a different grandchild. The rota took a lot of phone calls rearrangements and time but my mother looked at it as her calling. Bubby became part of the everyday conversation in our house — “Who’s visiting today?” “How is she feeling?” — and despite her weakening state Bubby was a strong secure presence in our life.

And then she became ill.