Excerpt
Dad and Grandma had a good relationship for the most part despite the fact that they were in-laws forced to live together. They good-naturedly teased one another all the time. On occasion they would begin to argue about some matter or other and soon one would challenge the other. "You wanna bet?!" It wasn't long before Dad would say, "But you haven't paid me the quarter you owe me from the last bet I won." to which she invariably responded in a snide tone, "What's the matter, I'm not good for it?" To my recollection, no bet was ever paid, but the debates and good humor ensued nonetheless.
Unfortunately, that is the only humor I can remember Grandma enjoying. She was a bitterly depressed woman, widowed after what appeared to have been an unhappy marriage to a cardiac invalid in a time of poverty, forced by circumstance to live with a duaghter who she did not like, totally dependent upon her for support and care. She spoke of death to me on a daily basis. "Only the good die young, and I'm not good enough." Grandma died in her mid 60s of uterine cancer and more directly pneumonia, which the doctors described to us as "a friend of the aged." She was much too young from my perspective, but not hers. Her funeral expenses were paid from the benefit that had accrued from the dime she paid to the insurance representative who arrived each week at our home to collect it, marking the book paid each time.