The first time I met her she told me to call her Grandma.  Although my husband and I were only dating at the time, and although she was his grandmother, she instantly welcomed me into the family and for the rest of her life she treated me and the spouses of all of her other grandchildren, as one of her own.

That sense of being treated as one of her biological grandchildren was reinforced for all of us on her 75th birthday.  She asked that everyone in attendance at her birthday dinner pose for a photo.  As we all surrounded the table where Grandma was seated, one of my husband’s cousins began asking those of us who had married into the family to sit down, saying that the photo was to be of “just the blood”.

So I, along with the other spouses who had married into the family, took…