This morning I walked into the brightly-lit windowless room at work where the copy machines, microwave and coffee pots are located and was hit with the aroma of a freshly-brewed pot of coffee.

It wasn't the scent of just any freshly brewed coffee, it was of a kind that jolted a memory from my childhood: Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen with an old stainless steel double-boiler burping coffee against a glass nipple. Pastel pink-and green-colored plates and pyrex casserole dishes crusted with cheese sit next to the sink waiting to be washed. And Grandma laughing her hearty laugh just out of sight in the other room.

A few years later and on a bed in a pink and green Cleveland hospital, grandma called me in to see her one last time. Clutching at my hand with a surprisingly warm grip, she bore directly at me with her milky eyes. "Always respect what your father tells you."

My Dad likes to tell a story about grandma. "My mother used to say to me, 'I don't care what you do for a living. You could be a garbage collector. Just make sure you're the best garbage collector.'" I can hear her belly-laugh even in my dad's retelling.

Grandma worked most of her life for a company that had on its payroll an artist. The artist painted mostly treescapes -- it was a landscape company -- and these paintings would be reproduced for magazine advertisements. That artist painted grandma sometime in the 1930s. In it, Grandma wears what I bet was her "Sunday best" -- a blue hat with a wide rim is pinned jauntily to the side of her head. The portrait captured her dimpled cheeks and her smile. It is more of a grin, really; she is about to start laughing.

It was actually painted from a studio photograph that grandma had scotch-taped to the back with a note 'Photograph [artist name] used for my portrait 1936'. The portrait hung in a corner of their Living Room and I don't know where it is now.