Grandma's life was fully spent. Sensing her time was ending, she climbed up three flights of stairs, took to her bed, and began to die. The other inhabitants of the great house, her children and grandchildren, cried out for her. How could her great vibrancy end? What would become of them--of the house--without her? Grandma reassures those surrounding her that "no person ever died that had a family . . . other parts of me called Uncle Bert and Leo and Tom and Douglas, and all the other names, will have to take over, each to his own" (427-428).