In the last year of his life, Grandpa Wallin quit driving.

For years he had tooled his big Plymouth over the beveled streets, the grey, rough asphalt dark from rain or silvered by the sun. When my brothers and I rode in the back seat, he’d crab, for God’s sake, stop all that commotion. On Sundays he used to ride with us to our ritual breakfasts, a family outing so Grandma didn’t have to cook. One day, we were half way out the door and he said he didn’t feel well and was staying home. He wasn’t sickly. A retired newspaper ad salesman of 53 years, he seemed even at home to be at work, putting on a white shirt every day and sitting in his chair, reading.

He seemed as stolid as ever to my nine-year-old mind. He might have been tired, though I don’t remember him napping except, maybe, when the book got dull and it rested on his stomach. (The man checked out four or five books a week from the library, Zane Grey and Frank Yerby, and read religiously.) Someone said he might have had indigestion, especially after my family’s breathless eating when we descended on our grandparents every holiday. Grandma Wallin would press him to say what was wrong, but he didn’t say. He fluttered a hand at her. Don’t fuss. Leave me be, woman, he’d say. The Rest of the Story.