Aged, pale fingers held four tiny rubies, one fat pearl and three minute sapphires. The fingers of the other hand were wrapped around a porcelain mug filled with two percent milk.

‘It’s that time again already?’ the lady grumbled, with a small smile trying to distract me from her dissatisfied nose wrinkle as she maneuvered herself to sit up straight in bed.

‘I told you what to do, didn’t I?’ I smiled at her, and she sighed.

‘Pretend each one is a different food,’ I continued, ‘like, which one was the cream puff again?’

‘The furosemide.’ The smile returned, ‘and ice cream?’

‘You don’t need to pretend for ice cream, Grandma,’ I reminded her, ‘I bought you the sugarless maple walnut, it’s in the freezer downstairs.’

Her eyes transformed from disappointment to excitement, and wordlessly she threw her hand to her mouth to swallow her allotted eight pills for a prompt eight A.M.

She gulped down the her last drops of milk and I handed her a tissue to wipe her chin, where a tiny white trail was threatening to rain on her fresh floral pajamas.

‘So Grandma,’ I said, ‘Are you game to get into the wheelchair today and help me in the kitchen?’

Her eyes lit up, ‘Oh sure, my little Adelais, what for?’

‘Well, Easter’s coming up and I thought,’ I trailed for effect, ‘that you could help me attempt to make your famous bread bunnies.’

She clapped her hands together and threw back her bed sheets.

For somebody who has never had my Grandmother’s bread bunnies, they sound good - and are twice as good as they sound. Chubby, yeasty bunny shapes lifted in a hot oven, glazed with honey and lovingly placed raisins for eyes and buttons. The most incredible bread ever made.

‘So Grandma,’ I said conversationally as I wheeled her carefully through the wallpapered hall and out to the kitchen, ‘Did you hear back from Great Aunt Agathe? You sent her that card last month, didn’t you?’

‘For her birthday,’ sighed Grandma, ‘But she might be really busy, you know, with everything.’

I knew what my Grandma meant by ‘everything,’ and I felt really rotten for bringing the subject up. ‘Everything’ meant everything in my Great Aunt’s life out west. ‘Everything’ meant the second husband who my Grandmother wasn’t even invited to meet. ‘Everything’ meant the three grandchildren my Grandmother didn’t even know her sister had until their ages were seven, four and two years old, and that was when she stumbled upon a card her sister had sent to her church Minister, who had apparently received Christmas cards from Agathe every year.

‘We were so close as children,’ Grandma would say if she ever had a bit to drink and the topic of her sister came up, ‘as young women we were each others’ confidants, we told each other everything...’

When people out of the loop were there and would ask what had happened, she would start to wail and blow her nose with the tissues she kept tucked up her sweater sleeves.

‘Robert went on a date with her and he didn’t like her, and a month later he asked me to go dancing with him... I didn’t know who he- honk- was, I didn’t know this was- honk- the Robert, but he told me after a few dates and I told Agathe, and I asked her if she minded and she went mad on me! I told her if it- honk- mattered so much I wouldn’t see him again but she wouldn’t listen and - and - before the next sunset, she had packed her bags and hopped on a train out west!’

Then she would pad off to bed, red eyed and head aching, only to wake up in the morning with the thinnest, sternest mouth line I’d ever seen.

Kind of like the one she wore right then.

I was relieved to see it disappear, however, as I pulled out the various shiny mixing bowls and ingredients required for our seasonal treat.

There was a comfortable silence in the kitchen as she measured the sugar and I preheated the oven to 375 degrees. I glanced over at my Grandmother, whose perfectly white hair held a ray of sunshine that had intruded through the open window. Her head shook ever so slightly, as it often did without her conscious approval.

‘Grandma,’ I said gently, breaking the silence, ‘tell me about the Wishing Well.’

Her eyes ignited as she quickly finished the measurement. She rubbed her palms together. She hadn’t told me the story in years.

‘Once upon a time,’ she relaxed in her wheelchair, snaking an arm behind her to double check the brake, then settling in, ‘in a land far, far away, there lived a little girl named Adelais. Adelais was a very quiet, proper little thing...’

I knew the story off by heart. Published by my Grandma years before I was born, a prize winner for several years after, I was named after the main character - Little Adelais. The story was about a child who was quiet and polite, but didn’t make any friends with the other children living in her village. Her parents sent her out one day to fetch some water from the village well, but being only four, she was too small to reach the pulley. In desperation, Adelais found herself standing upon the stone base of the well and reaching out. In the story, she falls down the well and finds herself in a fantastic world of fairy tales. There, she learns to make friends, and when her new friends decide to help her escape the well to return home, she grows up to be a friendly and loving person, no longer shy or contained.

My Grandma finished the story with a flourish, and the buzzer went off. The bunnies were ready to cool, and it was time for her next set of meds.

A few quiet hours later, while the theme song to the noon news rang out from the living room where my Grandpa napped, we were putting the finishing touches on our little masterpieces.

‘Adelais,’ my Grandmother said to me suddenly, ‘One day you will be a fine baker.’

I smiled.

‘You will go very far. My Little Adelais... I am so very proud of you.’

I never told her how proud I was to be her granddaughter. I never told her the honour it was to be named ‘Adelais.’ Even in the last days, I didn’t let her know just how brave I thought she was. I wish I had. She was my Grandmother. But, you know, I think she knew just how I felt. She knew that I still had a bit of ‘Little Adelais’ in me. She knew I was still a bit shy... I really miss her. More than I can put into words, more than I can think or act or cry. All of the excess in the world cannot outdo the mourning felt in this room today for this wonderful woman, by the people she met, the people she loved, the people she touched. We all have a ‘Little Adelais’ in us, not just me. We all have a Wishing Well, too, and my Grandmother was mine. She always will be.

I love you, Grandma.”

A glistening sea of eyes stared back at her, some crinkled in thought, some wide and tearful. Lips trembled throughout the pews like the warning of an earth-shattering quake, and as she stepped down to return to her seat, a single stifled sob echoed from the exit of the church. She turned, already knowing whose frilly hat she would see. As her Great Aunt Agathe took her seat, the Minister cleared his throat at the podium once again and Adelais felt her mother’s tight squeeze.

“When Alice helped fill in at the Bishop University daycare, there was a story that she would always tell the children. This story, world acclaimed, winner of countless prizes and outlined already by Alice’s granddaughter Adelais, was called ‘The Wishing Well,’ and I am going to read it for you all now.”

Adelais squeezed her mother’s hand back, and fluttered her eyes shut, ready to drop out of the world and into one, unlike her own, it seemed, where everything was as it should have been.