8 years old: Paternal Grandmother died of cancer at 77
26 years old: Paternal Grandfather died at 95
2 weeks before I turned 27: Maternal Grandfather died of prostate cancer at 86
43 years old: Maternal Grandmother died at 90
My father was adopted so I don’t know the longevity on that side of the family. My mother’s family seem to come from pretty hearty stock. Their siblings almost all made it into their 80’s.
I started life with four great-grandparents and four grandparents. Now, at age 45, I have just one grandparent left.
Age 1: Maternal great-grandfather died.
Age 13: Paternal grandmother died.
Age 18: Maternal great-grandmother died.
Age 18: Paternal great-grandmother died.
Age 20: Paternal great-grandfather died.
Age 33: Paternal grandfather died.
Age 38: Maternal grandmother died.
My paternal grandfather remarried when my grandmother died but I don’t think of his (still living) wife as my grandmother. She was a close family friend who I’ve known since birth so, even though I care for her very much, I never stopped thinking of her as “Jane”. My sister’s kids, born after they married, all call her Grandma and think of her as their great-grandmother.
The fact that anyone has great-grandparents as kids and young adults just amazes me. My mom never even knew her grandparents, let alone me. And my dad’s last grandparent died in 1969, 23 years before I was born. Granted many of them died younger, but still.
Since my father wasn’t born until his parents were 50, I never met them. They died before I was born. Same for my mother’s father, who died young. The only grandparent I knew was my mother’s mother, who lived to be 93 and who died in 1975 when I was 28.
I kind of knew one great grandmother on my mother’s side. She lived across the country so I only ever met her a few times. I was probably around 10 when she died.
I knew one great grandfather on my father’s side, he died when I was 11. I remember going to his house every so often, but never understood who he was at that age.
My mother’s father died just before I was born. Her mother is still alive at 84.
My father’s father died when I was 9, only have vague memories of him as he wasn’t around much. I do remember him giving me money to go buy cigarettes for him and them actually selling them to me at 9.
My father’s mother died when I was 22. We used to spend a lot of time with her and I still miss her.
My daughters have two great grandmothers alive. Though they will never know my mother as she died just before my oldest was born.
I’m almost 41, my parents had me young so their parents were pretty young too.
Maternal grandmother - died when I was two (murder)
Maternal grandfather - died when I was 25 (prostate cancer). He and my daughter were quite close
Paternal Grandfather - died when I was four. Damage from an exploding television!
Paternal grandmother - died when I was some age between 13 and 22. No idea of the cause
So it was just my maternal Grandad for me for most of my life, really. And their causes of death tell me nothing about my own long-term prospects (prostate cancer in a man in his eighties is to be expected and isn’t an indicator of anything).
My mother’s mother, my last living grandparent, is still somehow alive and in remarkably good shape despite being a 90-something year old woman who seems to survive on nothing but sausage and vodka. She’s mostly lucid (and a very nice old alcoholic lady) but she’s very forgetful, and doesn’t seem to remember much that’s happened in the last decade or so.
Lost my maternal grandparents in the 1990’s. My paternal grandfather about 11 years ago. My paternal grandmother is still going pretty well at age 92. I am in the low 40’s.
I was 47 and still had both paternal grandparents when this thread was started. I lost my grandmother a few months later after I turned 48, and my grandpa two months before my 51st birthday.
My mom’s dad died when I was 1, Dad’s dad died when I was 5, Mom’s mom died when I was 22, and Dad’s mom is still fit, active and traveling the world, in her mid-70s. I’ll be 32 next month. My wife is 33, and still has all four of her grandparents.
ETA, my almost-8-year-old son has 3 grandparents (my wife’s dad died before he was born).
I had 3 grandparents and 3 great-grandparents when I was born. My mother’s mother’s father died when I was a baby. My mother’s mother’s mother died when I was about five–I have only the vaguest of memories of her. My father’s mother’s mother died when I was 8, so I also remember her only a bit.
My paternal grandfather died, very young, 4 years before I was born.
The three remaining grandparents all died within a 16 month span: maternal grandmother, age 83 (ovarian cancer) just before my 38th birthday; paternal grandmother, just after her 89th birthday, when I was 38; and maternal grandfather, age 92 and a month, by which time I was 39.
My kids, almost 19 and just turned 16, have all four of their grandparents still alive. They were 8 and 5 when my last grandparent died, and the elder was about 2 when my wife’s last grandparent died.