Grandma Grace was my mother’s mother and she lived in New Hampshire. She was soft and round and grey and smelled of baking and talcum powder. I’m sure she never wore a corset. Her belly was round and soft, as were her breasts, perfect for a little girl to snuggle against and be lulled to sleep.

My father’s mother was New York. We called her Nana. She was a businesswoman who wore stylish dresses and hats, but when she opened her mouth, the words that came out were "dese" and "dose" and "goils" and "boids" and "erl".

She was tall and bony and we rarely sat in her lap. But she let us to look through her jewelry drawer, and told us the history of each piece. Then we’d festoon ourselves with her necklaces and pins, and play fancy lady.

Grandma Grace was an Episcopalian. She believed in God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, sitting on his golden throne. She read her Bible every night, and believed that if she lived a good and righteous life, her soul would go to glory when she died.

Nana was Lutheran, and believed in the devil and hell, in fire and brimstone. She was guided more by the stick than by the by carrot. She walked a straight and narrow line, fearing a fall into the abyss below.

Grandma Grace died of stomach cancer. She came to our house to die, and it took a long, long time. Every day Mary Artell , the retired nurse who lived next door, came over and gave her a shot of morphine.

And when Grandma Grace died, my mother became an atheist. She was very bitter. "How can I believe in a God who would let my sainted mother die in such pain, while that witch walks around in perfect health?"

That witch, of course, was my Nana. And she walked around in perfect health for many years after my Grandma Grace died. Nana continued to drive her Pontiac to her job, and on weekends took the train into the city to shop and go to the theater with her New York friends.

And after she retired, she moved into the guest cottage on our property. She lived in the cottage and saw her grand daughters graduate from high school and go on to college. She attended my marriage ceremony, and I have a snap shot of her holding my baby son on her lap. You can’t see that I am standing just off frame, ready to catch the baby should she totter, for by 1958 she was already becoming feeble.

There came a time when her forgetfulness was a danger to herself and the cottage. My father reluctantly placed her into a nursing home, and visited her every weekend. He watched the slow deterioration. On bad days she did not recognize him, and acted in a child-like manner. On good days she cried and begged him to take her home.

Eventually there were no more good days, and then she was bedridden and unresponsive. After his last visit to see her, my father wrote:

5 years later, at the age of 66, my mother, the athiest, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Our family doctor said that the heart attack that felled her was so massive that she was dead before she ever hit the ground.

So.

What do you make of that?