My 91-year-old grandmother is dying. She lives in Scranton, Pa., and my daughters and I spent a day with her last week. While my grandmother watched, the three of us played with dolls, painted our toenails, ate grilled cheese sandwiches, and did countless art projects.

The girls, 2 and 4 years old, didn’t seem at all phased by my grandmother’s frail condition due to heart failure. She lay in an enormous La-Z-Boy chair for most of the day, frequently dozing off. When she was awake, she managed to smile at the girls’ antics and even occasionally make a remark that showed she was following the activity.

“Let’s name the babies Stinky and Pinky,” I said about the blue and pink dolls that I had brought for the girls as a gift from my grandmother. The girls giggled and a minute later I asked my grandmother what she thought we should name them. “Stinky and Pinky sounds good to me,” she said. She didn’t know what city she was in; she couldn’t recall my name or how I was related to her. But she was following the conversation.

My grandmother’s level of card playing has always been a good measure of her mental abilities. Right before we left, I asked her if she wanted to play a game of gin. I knew she hadn’t played in more than a month, which my mother and her two sisters considered as telling a sign as any doctor’s prognosis.

I could see she was putting forward a tremendous effort when she nodded her head. “Sure, honey,” she said. I dealt the cards and we played. When I won, I tried to sneak a look at her cards. Was she really playing or just going through the motions? The answer was somewhere in between the two. We all kissed and hugged her goodbye and headed back to New York. Not before stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts — what better way to drown one’s sorrow than a half dozen glazed and an iced coffee?

While my girls were fast asleep and I was cruising along 84 East, I began to weep, for the slow decline of this once-formidable, always opinionated, and forever — even now — elegant woman, and for her inevitable death.

My grandmother was vocal about what mattered to her. The things that she valued ranged from the mundane to the grandiose: clean finger nails, a quality public education, dental hygiene, carefully prepared meals, a vodka, straight up (before dinner) — and the importance of a mother being at home to raise her children.

Many of my childhood memories of her are centered on a small card table in Palm Beach, Fla., where I spent several spring breaks during middle school. We played endless rounds of casino and gin. She almost always beat me. She was a competitive person and had no mercy for anyone — including her granddaughter.

My adult memories of her also center on a small card table, this one in Scranton, where I would take my children to visit her during the spring and summer months. When my grandfather died 8 years ago, I took my son Jacob, who was then 6 months old, to visit. I decided that before I returned to New York I was going to write all of her condolence thank you letters, which were weighing on her. Donations had been made in my grandfather’s name, and she wanted everyone to be thanked in a timely manner.

“Dear Bobby,” I read each completed note aloud to my grandmother to make sure it was acceptable before I sealed the envelope. “Thank you for the generous gift in honor of Artie. The University meant so much to him and your gift was such a thoughtful gesture. Fondly, Ruth.”

“I didn’t tell you to write generous. Rewrite it,” she would say. Or, “It should say sincerely. Not fondly. Rewrite it.” And I did — all the while eating little plates of silver dollar pancakes with warm maple syrup that she made me, or small tuna sandwiches with a few potato chips and radishes on the side. I was starving after each meal. The portions were minute.

While no one can predict just how quickly the end will come, it is in sight. To die at 91 years old, comfortably, is ideal, I guess — if there is such a thing. Really, I asked myself over and over as I sped along the highway home, why am I crying?

I was crying at how lovingly my mother and her sisters have attended to every detail of my grandmother’s care. How they have agonized about where my grandmother should spend her last years. How they have rotated their visits, along with so many other family members, to make sure that my relatives were constantly surrounding my grandmother.

And finally, I think I was crying at the swift passage of the time, and at the realization that it will be my mother who is dying, and my responsibility to make sure her every need is lovingly met.

A few months ago, my mother and I had a conversation about how quickly my children are growing, and how in a blink of an eye, daughters become mothers and mothers become grandmothers. It makes me anxious to think that before I know it, one generation will have slipped into the shoes of the next, I confessed to her.

She dryly interrupted my philosophical waxing. “If you think you’re upset thinking about how quickly the next stage is speeding toward us, how do you think I feel?” she asked.

She has a point.

sarasberman@aol.com