Role reversal: Caring for the caregiver

'How did I get so lucky?"

Those words from anyone else in Grace Snaggs' situation would probably be offered with sarcasm. But she means it.

She's sitting opposite me in a dimly lit living room in West Philadelphia on a Sunday afternoon. Oprah is saying something on a nearly muted television in the background. Bespeckled and with shoulder-length gray hair, Grace is outfitted in a navy print dress with a sweater draped over her shoulders. She has yellow hospital socks on her feet and a cane nearby.

I'm visiting to deliver lentil soup made by my wife and am struck by the incredibly appreciative attitude of a 72-year-old woman who is scheduled for chemotherapy the following morning, "one bus stop away" as she puts it, at Penn. Unprompted, she continues to voice her thanks.

"I'm so grateful."

"I'm so blessed."

"So many good things have happened to me."

As we talk, it occurs to me that Grace knows me better than I know her. That's my fault. She's been in our employ for a quarter-century, but she's family. She likes to joke that she "came with the house," a reference to having worked for Kenny Gamble 28 years ago when my wife acquired his home.

Grace is the mother of three, two daughters plus Rudyard, the apple of her eye, whom she raised in a second-floor walk-up on the Main Line. She was born in Tobago and went to school in Castara, a fishing village. She's the oldest of nine siblings. A brother died at age 36, but all others are living and still on the island. She came to the States at age 29, attracted by the presence of her cousins, and has worked in various domestic capacities ever since.

She first worked for a family in New Jersey, then for Flossie and Richard; Jolly; Diane; Kenny; Frank and Jane; and us. Many of them, and her large circle of family and friends, came to our house when we celebrated her 65th birthday with steel drums in the backyard.

We haven't celebrated many family milestones without her. She was one of my wife's bridesmaids - the only one not related, and the first asked by my wife. There for the boys' births. And all of the kids' confirmations. Several holidays. She was there for my father-in-law's battle with cancer (the only one he would let in his room when he was really sick), and bedside for the passing of my mother-in-law.

"I called [your brother-in-law], but I knew better than to say she'd passed. Instead I told him, 'I can't wake up your mother.' "

That sense of decorum and discretion has always been her hallmark. I've seen Grace get overwhelmed, but never angry, which is more than she can say - but never would - about me. Helping a family that once consisted of two parents, four kids, and four dogs can cause the former.

When she thinks I'm too involved in affairs on the home front, which is often, she'll call me an "auntie man," but as pronounced by Grace, it's "a-h-n-t-i mon." Grace also has a head full of island sayings, like "You don't know if the roof leaks until you live inside."

Our daughter remembers once locking her in a closet while Grace was babysitting for her at age 4. And Grace teaching her to dance in the laundry room.

"But mostly I think about how, on her way home from finding out she became a citizen, she told me it was the proudest day of her life," my daughter said, "and then proceeded to chastise me on my lack of immediate knowledge of American history."

The three boys have sometimes been less hospitable. After tiring of her talking to herself or hearing one too many versions of her singing "Red Red Wine," they've called her under the laundry chute with the ruse of "needing to tell her something," only to pelt her with socks - which she knew were coming, but would still oblige their high jinks.

"Don't you remember when you brought home Michael Jr. from the hospital and Winston [our cocker spaniel] came out of the house to sniff the car seat with him still in it? I took that picture," she reminds me, about a snapshot that I prize in a family photo album. I didn't recall that she was the one who captured the image, but I'm not surprised.

I ask which of our four dogs has been her favorite. Grace doesn't take the bait, but does make a point of telling me that she was never able to get mad at Checkers, our white Lab.

"She had that habit of putting her head on my lap," she remembers with a smile.

"Winston never liked to be alone. So I'd make him a bed while I did laundry and he'd lay nearby."

Thankfully she's supported in her current fight by many cousins: Audrey, Angela, Peola, Lennox, and Ancil, in whose house we are seated.

"Ancil told me, 'Grace, you've cared for everyone, so now we are caring for you,' " she says, beaming.

Another of her sayings pops into my head: "Thank God for nothin', there ain't no trouble with it."

That outlook from a septuagenarian who has worked her entire life in service to others reminds me of a story I once read recounted by Jack Bogle, the legendary founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group Inc. In a book called Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life, Bogle shares a conversation between writers Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller during a billionaire's party on Shelter Island.

At one point, Vonnegut pointed to the host and asked Heller: "Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel Catch-22 has earned in its entire history?"

"Yes," Heller responded, "but I have something he will never have: Enough."

Grace has enough. I'm hoping she can teach me.

Michael Smerconish can be heard from 9 a.m. to noon on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124 and seen hosting "Smerconish" at 9 a.m. Saturdays on CNN.