Grandma Fowler is the last living grandparent I have and now she is gone. My grandmother is dead. A major stroke 15 years ago whittled her mind and body into a bedridden, helpless being who finally succumbed to the will of God and left this material world for a better place.

This can't be true? Just yesterday I walked to her house as a little boy to eat chocolate chip cookies and play pinochle. It's been only a few years since she was my high school lunch-lady and hired me to wash dishes in the school cafeteria in-trade for a deliciously prepared lunch (the lunches really were delicious).

As I close my eyes, I can imagine and still taste the egg and bacon breakfast prepared by my grandma with bacon grease spooned onto eggs to harden the yellow yolk. Tears fall from my cheeks as I close my eyes and virtually taste the mahogany-skinned Thanksgiving turkey with giblet dressing and cranberry sauce prepared by my mother, grand and great-grandmothers of holidays past as the men of our large Irish family watch NFL football and eat smoked oysters.

With the death of my grandmother goes the history of my family. Great-grandpa Fowler died before I was born. Grandpa Fowler, great-grandmother and great-grandfather Fowler's son died many years ago and took the family stories and history to his grave. Grandma Fowler's stroke kept the same family history tightly knotted in the recesses of her lesioned brain. With the loss of this history, I crave understanding. What is my family history? Where did I come from? Am I predetermined to live a life of giving or does my history predict I will take from the people I love?

Great-grandma Fowler, an immigrant from Ireland, is long past. I remember her calling me Wee Willie as a little boy while I giggle and say, "That's not my name. My name is Billy." She rubs my hair and laughs as I run out of the house to play with the other kids. I struggle to understand her heavy accent and avoid her long stories and wrinkled hand grabbing for mine. As an adult, I wish I stayed and listened to her wisdom. Her seasoned hand grasping for my little fingers held knowledge of my past, knowledge of me, of whom I am and of whom I might become. My child's mind thought only of sun, running, playing and exploring.

Talking to an old lady whose words I can barely understand is useless in my 6-year-old brain. As I run out the backdoor, great-grandma Fowler's eyes moisten and her daughter-in-law, my now deceased grandma Fowler, hands her a tissue. Although this happens daily, I never understand the ritual. I dismiss it as the result of aging and now understand it as something more.

With every step I take away from my great-grandmother, she takes one step closer to death. Her youth is visualized in her little great-grandson's excitement. Talking to a little boy about playing, jumping, exploring and living in the "Old Country," allows my great-grandmother to relive her past; to be a little girl playing with her great-grandson in her mind as her body denies such pleasure. Wee Willie running away from her old body, not desiring to understand, not wishing to learn; dismisses the old lady in the wheelchair as useless and annoying - purposeless!

I distinctly remember looking into my great-grandmother's eyes and staring. I'm not sure why I stare but in this struggle to understand why, I find a connection. My light blue eyes mirror the light blue eyes of my great-grandmother. As her old eyes moisten staring into my youthful eyes I begin to tear. As a young boy, I do not understand the emotion. As an adult, I get it. Visualizing the experience, I tear still today. There are only a few people in life we stare at and understand - our spouse, our kids and people we love. Looking into a person's eyes and understanding their thoughts, feelings and motives is a gift reserved only for those deeply in love.

Our history teaches about our future. My relationship with my grandmother makes me the person I am today. My grandma really cared about everybody. She cared about the struggling kids at the school where she worked. She cared greatly about her grandkids. She cared and nurtured her husband who had struggles of his own and she cared for her kids. My grandmother was a wonderful person.

I chuckle remembering my grandma speeding down the freeway, passing cars at random and yelling at them to speed up. I love that my grandma had an expressive use of vocabulary, expelling words out of her mouth that I would have had my mouth washed with soap had I used them. But most of all, I love that my grandma told me she loved me more than anyone else in the world.

I am consumed by death. I am fearful of my own death, petrified of my parent's death and overly protective of my grandkids and daughter in fear of their demise. Growing old stinks! Life is too fun, exhilarating, purposeful and meaningful to end too soon. Health concerns of my father have created urgency in making purpose of this life we live in today. I just hope to make a difference in the people who live beyond my life as my grandmother's did for me.

Often adults and kids I counsel about grief relay the same fear - the fear of their own demise. People who grieve the death of one who has taken their own life fear they might make the same decision. People who grieve the death of one by disease fear an undetected cancer, and clients who grieve the death of a loved one by accident become incapacitated by an unsafe world full of life-stealing danger. I question every pain, twitch and thoughtless mistake I make as a precursor to a diagnosable disorder and my personal demise. I understand the psychological reasoning behind these thoughts but I can't turn them off.

Life is terminal. Knowing we will all leave this Earth does not help the desire to delay the inevitable. The will to live is powerful! In this consummation of death I still understand, it is not important how we die. What is important is the positive difference we make in the lives of those we leave when we pass.

Bill Rutherford is a elementary school principal, psychotherapist, executive chef and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please email him at [email protected].