“I didn’t tell anyone else. There was the problem of expressing my devastation. Grandparents were meant to be old; they were meant to get sick. This was among the sorrows of life for which outsiders were not expected to pause their routines, to inconvenience themselves.

There were tragedies of the highest order that upended ordinary life, the ones that ushered in deviations of kindness. Then there was life itself, at every turn a devastation, which nevertheless did nothing to stall its flow.”