When I was nine, my dad took me to live with his parents for a while. I’d grown up in Denver and Tampa, so it was my first real experience living on a farm and, for reasons I’ll get into later on down the line, it was a stressful, crazy time.

My grandfather Del was a ghostly presence, even then. He woke up early to do farming chores, then worked a normal job at a factory, then came home and did more farming. The main image I have of him is a grimy, sweating man in a light blue work shirt sitting in a ratty la-z-boy watching John Wayne movies in the evening. His glasses were thick, and his hair was always combed tight against his scalp, like Franklin Roosevelt, who took office a month after Del was born.

My grandmother  Patricia, on the other hand, was a constant presence. She was always there, taking us out to pick blackberries, or burning off the inevitable ticks we picked up in the process. Even if she was out working, she was within shouting distance of the ramshackle house we lived in. The strange thing is, I have less of an image of her burned into my head. I remember her hair was curly, and she wore an apron over old-fashioned dresses.

It was the most traditional environment I’ve ever experienced. In many ways, it was more like I’d been transported to the 50s than it was like 1986.

These were dark days. My dad’s mind had never really recovered from Vietnam, and this was deep in his final spiral. I spent a lot of time inventing stories with G.I. Joe figures (old-school giant ones, my modern Joe vs. Cobra toys were back in Tampa) and creating my own little newspaper. I buried my head in the sand.

One day, my grandfather took me down into the tornado shelter. He’d set up a makeshift desk in front of one of the low concrete benches and on it, there was an antique Royal typewriter.

“That belongs to your grandmother, so you take care of it, y’hear?” he said. “Figured you make a newspaper, you oughta do it right.” That shelter, cool and dark, safe under heavy metal doors… That fussy old typewriter… That was the first time I truly escaped into writing.

After my father’s death, his family blamed my mom for it, and I lost touch with them. I visited them once, years ago, but we never really got past the estrangement.

I just found out that Delano Otto Simmons died on December 31st, 2009, followed by Patricia Glenn Simmons on June 10th, 2010. You’d think that the attenuated relationship would make it hurt less, but somehow, finding out so belatedly hurts even worse.

They were family, no matter what stupid, broken drama had accreted between us, no matter what walls had been built by misunderstanding and pained memory. I’m sorry we never really repaired things, grandma and grandpa.

Farewell.