CANDY GRAM

Here's three facts about my late Grandma, Matilda Jane Daugherty Linn (1904-1999):

1. She was a flapper in the 1920s, which meant that she wore her hair bobbed, frequented speakeasies, and smoked cigarettes. I still have the beaded tassels which hung from the bottom of her dress.

2. David Letterman bagged her groceries when he was a teenager.

3. She adored See's Candy. At holiday time, she ordered so many boxes as gifts that See's delivered it all for free.

Here's a great story about my gram and See's Candy: For a number of years, my gramma had a tough combo of being mentally sharp but dealing with a number of physical ailments. During that stretch of time, my mom flew out to Indiana to visit Matilda. She found that my gramma was depressed and feeling that life wasn't worth living. She told my mom that she would stop eating and drinking. "Well," said my mom, "that's going to put a damper on our visit."

That night, as my mom and gramma were chatting, my mom brought out a box of See's Candy. My gramma saw it and decided to break her "no eating, no drinking" rule. She started to eat pieces of candy and then moved on to regular food. She decided that life was worth living after all.

After that visit, my mom wrote to See's Candy and thanked them for saving Matilda. See's wrote the story up in their corporate newsletter and gifted my gramma a box of treats for every month that she lived. Matilda passed away a few years later.

Between you and me, I think it was my mom's company that perked my gramma up. Still, God Bless her, I hope my gramma is up in Heaven right now, doing the Charleston and enjoying a big box of See's.