And then there were none.

My last surviving grandparent died this morning, at (IIRC) age 85. I was never really as close to Grandma Chapelle as I was to Grandma DeSio, though. This was partly due to geography: Dad's side of the family mostly lived in Appleton, a two hour drive away. So we only visited them a couple times a year, where the DeSios lived half an hour away and got a lot more visits. But it was also because Grandma Chapelle just wasn't as easy to get close to. Maybe it was just that she had so many more grandkids and her attention was divided, maybe it was her nearly stereotypical 1950s parenting tendencies...but in any case, there wasn't much of a bond between me and her.

The last time I saw her in person was in 1999 at my sister's wedding, but that was very brief. The last time I spent any significant time around her was in 1994, at my brother's college graduation. So I never really saw the significant decline she went into in recent years, and I suppose at least I therefore have better memories of her as a result.

Oddly, despite being nearly 15 years younger than my other grandma (who died just barely before she would have become a great-grandmother), she had been a great-grandmother for over a decade. I have cousins who are more than 10 years older than I am, and at least one of them has a daughter who is a teenager.