Now, Granny had lived by herself in a big old house on a hill until a couple of months earlier when she had fallen down and broken her hip, and been moved into a nursing home. All of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren came together for the funeral, and that house became the central gathering-place. It was a nice place full of good old furniture, but in her declining years Granny had become something of a compulsive pack rat and so there were heaps of newspapers and accumulated mail squirreled away everywhere. In the end we had to haul away several truckloads of junk.