@mel: this about your grandfather i feel particularly.
my grandma died of cancer - a malignant tumor in her stomach - in november 1998. this was the very first time someone close to me died and i was exceptionally touched by the event.
maybe some see their grandparents - or one or two of them - as distant figures they visit during holidays, but i was very close to her (and her husband, who is still alive and kicking). i followed the various phases of her sickness and i still get a shiver sometimes, almost four years since the event. i reckon these members of our families we are tied to in a loose, yet vibrant way - the same blood running down through history, the altruistic, happy love we may often feel bestowed upon us by them - they have a special place in our feelings, and especially when they die we are somehow driven to ponder about the turning of the season, and maybe some new sense of responsibility for carrying on what they have done and what they were.
rahvin.