My grandfather was ill. He was a diabetic. He was born in Schenectady, NY and married there, but after marriage drifted down the river and landed in Dalton and Springfield, Mass. He stayed there for a while and then came as far as Dover, Kent, Delaware. He was told the climate would be good for his disease. He was a mechanic as a young man, but by the time I knew him, he was a part time farmer, renting small farms. He refused to keep taking his insulin and died in a diabetic coma. I was age 8 at the time.

My grandmother was a hugely fat woman, who was kind, but very shy. She had a lot of children, although most of them died at birth or quickly from childhood diabetes. She had six live to adults and then my Uncle Rod was hit by a drunk driver at 18 and died. After my grandfather died, she was brought into town and the children rented her a tiny house. She however must not have liked it. She wrote away to a lonely-hearts newspaper and wrote to and later married someone she met through that. He lived way out in West Virginia in the mountains with no electric or running water. She took a bus, met him and married him - never returned to Delaware. One of my Aunts used to go visit, but none of the other children would go.