Having a family is different to having friends. You choose your friends. You can’t choose your family. And since at least someone in your family will have traits that you would avoid in a friend, your family, strangely enough, is your first point of contact with the unfamiliar.

It’s been a few years now since the second of my two grandmothers passed away. She was an amazing woman. If you pitched a character like her to a filmmaker he’d reject her as being too cliche’d. She baked things for me, and knitted clothes, and had tea parties with my sister. In the earliest years of my memory she was able to mow the lawn and play soccer with me in the back yard, although of course she was too old for that soon.

That was when I was a little kid. When I became a teenager I spent hardly any time with her. Is that my fault? What does a teenage boy do with his grandmother? Nevermind. I was 17 when she passed away from an aneurysm, and although I wasn’t there at the moment, I saw her in her final hours. She was pale, but dignified and collected. She knew how to die, and I’m certain she’s gone to somewhere better.

My other grandmother I don’t really remember. She died when I was very young.