text: My mom’s side of the family has a history of living a long time. My great-grandfather died when I was twelve years old, he was one hundred and three. At his funeral, we comforted his girlfriend, who we still visit on occasion. Grandpa’s wife died seventeen years before he did. Her name was Mildred, and she had lived from the mid 1910’s to 1999, meaning she didn’t live to see the turn of the millenium. This also means that I never met her, as my oldest cousin, who is five years ahead of me, was the only one of her four great-grandchildren that she ever got to meet. According to my mom, she was a very stern woman who raised her kids during world war two. She was a tough woman with a hard shell. This caused some issues when she got older, however. In the late 1990s, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her and confined her to a wheelchair. My great-grandfather did everything for her. He fed her, he helped her to the bathroom and to bed. She hated the loss of independence and the burden it put on her husband. My grandpa didn’t see it that way, though. They were both retired, he had all the time in the world to spend with his wife. My mother said that Grandma Mildred always complained about being in that wheelchair and missed the days that she could take walks with her husband. She really did hate that chair. My mom said she was a stubborn lady too. She’d always try to eat on her own, without grandpa’s help. Her hands were too weak to hold the fork sometimes, though. This would only upset her more. One day, grandpa was doing some gardening in their yard, and grandma was watching from the driveway. Their house was on a hill, it was small and simple. They liked it. Grandpa finished some gardening and looked over at his wife, only to see her rolling down the hill in her wheelchair and being launched into a ditch across the street. He called 9-1-1 and waited for paramedics to arrive. They took his wife to the hospital where she stayed for a few hours. Once all of her loved ones surrounded her, she died in a coma. My mom believes that she somehow knew her family was with her, I just think that the family was lucky enough to be with her at the time that she died. Grandpa felt guilty about her death for years,he never talked about Grandma unless he was showing off a picture of her. I wish I’d listened to his stories more. Her death was considered a tragedy to the family, but one question has remained all this time. At every family gathering, there’s always an argument about it, even in the people who didn’t know Grandma Mildred. My cousin (the younger sister of the only one of us our great-grandmother ever met) and I discussed it once, only once.