Grandpa Michael made some good investments, and I stand to receive quite a pile when Gram finally goes.

Alzheimer’s disease is starting to get to her. She sent me three cards for my birthday.

She was a girl during WWI. Automobiles were toys for the idle rich. Everyone used horses back then. She was a woman during WWII and spent time in the factories. Her son, my father, went to war and didn’t come back.

I remember when I was young, sitting on her lap and squirming while she patiently taught me geography. It amazed me that you could draw pictures of the world and have them mean something.

In high school I interviewed her for an essay. I took a thousand notes, and the paper could have been a hundred pages long, but the assignment was for only five, and I cut it short.

She’s known love, heartbreak, success, failure, victory and defeat. What wisdom, what lessons, are locked up now in that grey head? What has she seen? When she’s gone, it’ll all be lost. Gone.

I’ll miss her.