I'm glad I made time to get to know my grandmother as an adult. Learning about her 99 years helped me see the world differently.

The author's grandmother lived to 99.

Courtesy of Tracy Granzyk

• My grandmother lived to 99, and I got to know her better as an adult than I did as a child.
• I'm glad we spent that time together and that I got to appreciate her in her complexity.
• Her wisdom helped me see the world in a different way.

"Do you think there is a heaven?" my 99-year-old grandma, who was a devout Catholic, asked me one of the last times I saw her alive. It was June of 2019, and my mom and I had driven south to Dyersburg...