In chapter 8, "San Diego, California," grandma asks Brent to take her out in the car. Brent thinks she just wants to go to the pharmacy or on a wild goose chase to find some old type of food that is no longer available. He is surprised when she puts on her nice clothes and asks him to get her gold brooch.

They drive into San Diego, which Brent's grandmother knows well. The only problem is that the area has changed a lot from when she was living there. She directs Brent to the place she wants to go, but then seeing that's it now a Chinese restaurant she tells him to drive on. Finally, she tells him to stop outside a "stucco house shedding paint." She tells Brent that her friend Rachel used to live there. They then drive into grandmother's old neighborhood where she points out an old bungalow where she lived with Brent's mother.

Brent, however, still thinks she's confused and heads towards a deli that he presumes she wanted to go to in the first place. His grandmother tells him that she never wanted to go to the deli. She wanted to see her old neighborhood for the last time. Despite Brent's protestations, she tells him she can feel she hasn't got much longer to live.

Before Brent drives home, she instructs him to drive them to one last neighborhood. Outside a two-story house, she points out a whirligig in the corner of the porch. She tells her grandson,

Somebody ... I don't know who, said there shouldn't be laughing after Auschwitz ... But I was there ... I can tell you that all those that died want that we should have a life with laughing.