What are you supposed to do when someone you're angry at dies?--my brother asked me last week.

My grandfather died on Dec. 29, early in the morning. He died in his sleep. At 3 a.m. he stopped breathing as he slept in his own bed in Lincoln, Massachusetts. I had said goodbye to him on Dec. 16 before I left for home, San Francisco.

I kissed him as I left and told him I loved him for the first time in a long time. He didn't answer. His skin was stretched tightly over his skull--he looked like death.

My grandfather was a doctor--a very good and very dedicated doctor--at Massachusetts General Hospital. He went to Harvard, was Business Manager of the Harvard Crimson and a member of the Fox Club. He lived in Leverett House too, E-entry. I was hoping to get his old room next year in the lottery. He used to ask why I kept switching rooms, since he lived in the same ones for three years.

Between The Crimson, Harvard and the local news you would think my grandfather and I would have a lot to talk about. But he was interested in football and golf and I rarely pick up the sports section. Freshman year he kept asking me about this big pile of dirt in the back of Soldier's Field. I never found out what they were building out there--after Harvard-Yale I never even crossed the Anderson Bridge. Beyond my half-hearted attempts to keep up with the football, my grandfather and I never had much to say to each other.

When he started to get sicker this fall, he'd swear angrily at me if I asked him how he was.

"Don't f***** ask me that," he'd say. "I feel like shit, I don't want to talk about how I am and you don't want to hear about it."

It's a reflexive greeting, "Hi, how are you?" Try not saying "you're welcome" when someone thanks you. Nearly impossible. I had myself pretty well trained until I slipped up a week before I saw him for the last time. By that time he was bed-bound and having trouble breathing, so his vitriol didn't have its normal force. What was worse, his anger, or his anger at not being able to express his anger?