SEARCH FOR GRANDDAUGHTERS HAS JOYOUS ENDING.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

Some of the most beautiful stories are born from the saddest. From the depths of depression where the lonely live.

Where Jerry Cave lived.

It is hard to look at this happy, wonderfully bright and funny 75-year-old woman now, and ever imagine her holed up in her Sylmar home feeling alone and forgotten - feeling like what's the use anymore?

Hard to see her wearing any face except the smiling one she wears now as president of the Valley Grams, the local chapter of the National Federation of Grandmother Clubs of America.

Grandmother. Is there a more comforting, warm word in the English language? Doubtful. Certainly not when you are able to look into the faces of your grandkids, hold them, play with them.

But what if you can't? What if you are a grandmother in name only? If you have to spend your life knowing that out there somewhere are your two granddaughters given up for adoption almost at birth? Two little girls you never saw, never held.

Now, add one more thing. They have become the only members of your family still alive today. Everybody else is gone. Everybody.

It's just you and them now. And you don't know where ``them'' are. You never did.

That's how you find yourself living where the lonely live, Jerry Cave says.

They meet twice a month in the hall over at American Legion Panorama City Post 817. The local grandmother's club.

There are about 20 of them in the hall on this night, and first and foremost in the order of business is passing around new pictures of the grandkids and great-grandkids.

Jerry Cave - who laughingly says she's too old to bow to feminine correctness, or whatever it's called, and change the ``y'' in her first name to an ``i'' - reaches into her wallet for pictures of two young women now in their 20s.

``These are my grandkids,'' the president of Valley Grams says proudly. ``Aren't they beautiful? I'm going to see them again this weekend.''

Everybody in the hall knows how important these visits with her granddaughters are for her - and the years of heartache and loneliness their president went through to possess these two pictures.

They know that Jerry's daughter-in-law died less than a month after the girls were born. Know that Jerry's son thought he was doing the right thing by putting the girls up for adoption so they could have a mother.

But he didn't tell his own mother his plans when he stopped by the hospital to visit her after a lengthy illness and surgery kept her bed-bound for more than a month.

``When I was finally well enough to see and hold my granddaughters, they were already gone,'' she says, putting the pictures back in her wallet.

Thus began a search that lasted more than 10 years - lasted through the deaths of her parents and all her siblings, lasted through the heartbreak of her only son dying in a car accident.

And still she searched, but could not find her granddaughters.

``I was alone, feeling sorry for myself, and about as low as a person could get,'' Jerry says. ``There wasn't anyone from my family left who even knew me, not even my only child.''

And then one day in October of 1989 the phone rang, and a small, female voice asked nervously if this was Mrs. Cave. Yes, Jerry said.

``Well, I'm your granddaughter,'' the teen-age girl named Rachael said.

``So am I,'' the girl named Stephanie said excitedly from an extension phone.

That was the last day Jerry Cave lived where the lonely live.

They made a date to meet, and the next morning Jerry called a friend who was a member of the Valley Grams. She was finally ready to join them, Jerry said.

She was finally a real grandmother.

There shouldn't be 20 grandmothers in this American Legion hall, the president of Valley Grams says.

There should be 200. Maybe even 2,000.

Loneliness is a rotten, destructive thing, Jerry says. She knows. It robs you of life - real life. Not the life where you get up in the morning and just go through the motions.

There's real life going on with these grandmothers. Just ask the school for severely retarded children and the other charitable organizations that are beneficiaries of the thousands of dollars the 200 clubs in the National Federation of Grandmothers raise every year.

There's real life in the dinner outings and movies these 20 grandmothers take in together - real life in their camaraderie, and their laughs.

Real life in the pictures they proudly pass around this American Legion hall where some of the most beautiful stories of life are born from the saddest.

Any grandmothers interested in more information about the Valley Grams can contact Jerry at [phone].

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PHOTO Megan Downing, left, Edna Foote, Jerry Cave, Ted Mrowicki and Dodie Gieseke help each other and several charities with thousands in annual donations.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News