I was nine the year my Nana and Papa both passed. I most remember not being able to feel what I wanted. My cousins, aunt and uncle were distraught. I was at my Papa’s open casket wanting to cry because everyone else was. My five-year-old sister was even more oblivious to the gravity of the situation than I was. She picked lint off my Papa’s suit as she held one half of a conversation with him.

In Williamstown, Massachusetts tonight, there’s a much different mood. Tomorrow we will visit my grandmother in the hospital and I will speak to her for the last time.

Williamstown is always another place and another time for me. Nothing but good happens here. It’s one of the few true communities left in America. My grandmother has a personal relationship with the pastor and police chief. It’s a place where it’s not cliché to say ‘It’s safe enough to leave your doors unlocked.’ Hell, you can even see the stars at night.

For me, Williamstown always meant grandma and grandpa, and grandma and grandpa always meant fun. Their styles of love were different – my grandpa’s more laid back, my grandma’s smothering – but I felt them both. Unconditional love was in high supply in Williamstown.

It was always a vacation here. I got more than my share of love at home, but that’s also where school was, where my parent’s divorce was, where the good and bad of everyday life was.

In Williamstown it was nothing but Go-Kart driving, checkers and enough chocolate chip cookies to give me a legitimate insulin high. Williamstown was an integral part of my childhood and that’s what I always feel here. Whenever I reach town I relax, because I know whatever else is going on in life, I’m about to be at grandmas.

There are memories throughout the house. The red pedal truck I rode in the basement as my grandfather worked on model planes, the glass tray of M&M’s that’s only stocked when I come to town and the goddamn grandfather clock in the kitchen that tick-tock’ed so loud through the wall to the guest room my sister and I slept in that it had to be turned off at night before we went to bed (grandma always had us on that one).

There are signs of love throughout the house. The basement features a cornucopia of pictures of all sides of the family – I’m mixed in with some polish-looking great-grandfathers I’ve never met. There’s the pencil height chart on the kitchen wall that grandma started for me when I was one and tracked my growth until I was 19 (if I ever wasn’t as tall during a visit as I felt I should be grandma insisted there was something wrong with the floor). However, my favorite love mark has to be from two years ago. In an otherwise ornate and meticulously planned living room, a bobble head figure of Chum Lee sits on the fireplace mantle. My grandfather, a gregarious Pawn Stars fan, insisted the birthday gift I gave him be placed in prime viewing location for company.

There are also signs of age in the house. There’s the note next to the TV that lists the three channels my grandfather cares about: “Celtics Channel – 26, History Channel – 39, Turner Old Movies Channel – 58.”

Side Note: I almost made fun of my grandfather’s ‘big button’ remote in the last paragraph. My grandfather quit high school his junior year after both his parents died by handing his books over to one of his 11 older siblings and saying “turn these in, I’m done.” He then bummed rides to California where he worked as an auto mechanic and nearly died more than once. Later in life when his town refused to repair a pothole on his street, he ran for mayor – largely on a ‘we want our roads fixed’ campaign – won, and fixed the pothole on day one. I decided he earned whatever remote he wants without some punk chiming in.

Until three days ago we thought my grandma was very sick with serious pneumonia and she was going to take a while to recover from it. A day later that wasn’t the truth – she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and only had weeks left to live. She decided yesterday she didn’t want to die with tubes in her and had them removed – she now has days left to live.

Death is never a surprise when it comes for an 83-year-old and my grandmother had several stints in the hospital the past year. That doesn’t make me any more ready for it.

So tomorrow I will say my final goodbye to my grandmother. She will share laughs, I will share tears and we will leave each other’s lives forever. Several days later I will receive a call from my mother telling me one of the few people on the planet who loved me unconditionally has passed. Her 60-year marriage to my grandfather will be over.

My only regret in our relationship is that I was never able to give her a great-grandchild. One day I’ll have a son or daughter. And one day that child will do something because, through the DNA handed down through my mother and me, she has a part of grandma in her. I’ll look at my kid and smile, and she’ll ask, “What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing,” I’ll say, “You just remind me of someone I used to know.”