A four-month-old baby boy rests in the arms of his grandmother as he arrived to visit her at the Spinza hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, Sunday, September 21. The Spinza hospital was built in Kunduz about 50 years ago and is the oldest hospital serving in the Kunduz area. - AP

Even in her dying days, my grandmother was figuring out how she could take care of my brother and me. With her mind hazy and her heart failing, she rang me from her hospital bed one day, insisting in an urgent whisper that if I got a call from the hospital, I needed to rush over because there would be something special for me.

When I pressed, asking her what would be so special, she impatiently hissed her teeth - in the way that only an old Jamaican granny can - and tried to fan me off. Finally, she gave in and told me this incredible story:

"Well," she started, "I heard the doctors and nurses talking last night and I'm going to have a bionic baby."

"What!" I yelped over the phone. "Gran, that doesn't make any sense."

"Wait nuh," she answered. "They are going to do an experiment using my body and I'm going to have a bionic baby. They're going to pay millions of dollars for the experiment and the money will go to you and your brother when I die."

At first, I laughed. Then, I cried.

This was one of many delusional tales my grandmother, Melita Elizabeth Johnson, would tell in the months leading up to her death on Good Friday in 1991. In another of her hallucinations, she made my brother, Ira, promise to secure her tiny freezer when she died. It would be stuffed with money, she assured him.

Full-time parent

We were adults by the time of her death, but Gran had been taking care of us almost from the day we were born and as she was leaving this life, her mind was still occupied with our well-being. She became our full-time parent when my parents, barely out of their teens, migrated to England to make a better life for all of us. She battled whatever the odds to ensure that we had a good life. When I got a half scholarship to attend Ardenne High School in Kingston, she wrote to every official she knew and worked every job she could to earn the money for my school fee. By then, the barrels of clothes and money from parents had all but dried up. When she went to Toronto, it was to create a brighter future for us, and within two years, she had paved the way for my brother and me to follow.

Ours is a very Caribbean story. Throughout our history, grandmothers have played a pivotal role in society. In the face of migration, tragedies, unemployment, poverty and teenage pregnancies, Jamaican grandmothers have raised their children's children, instilling values and essentially holding the society together.

As Grandparent's Month draws to a close this September, and as you read this and the following story by freelance writer, Deidre Forbes, spare a moment for the grandmothers and great grandmothers around you who are making a difference to our society.

- Grace Cameronon