Fascinating. I want to hear more!

My grandparents on both sides were Amish. My paternal grandmother died when Dad was 25, about 10 years before I was born. They said that the doctor didn't know what was wrong with her, she just kind of wasted away. In recent years I have suspected from how they described it that she had lupus, as I have had also.

Grandpa never married again but I learned a few years ago of a child of his. I never met her; she died in her middle 70s, I think. It infuriates me that my Amish relatives never took her into our family. It was one of those archaic hushed-voice situations. One of my sisters did meet her- and that sister was as bad as the rest of them.

Most of my grandparents lived to be a good age My paternal grandfather was almost 96 when he died and the other two lived to be 78 and 76.

My father always said he didn't want to live as long as his father did, and he didn't. He was just past 93.