Sivapriya Subramaniam’s Reviews > Death of an Ordinary Man > Status Update

And it occurs to me now that perhaps she was really calloused, as I’ve so often said, since callus will form in soft places that have too often been rubbed sore.

I imagined it still containing particles dislodged through time from David’s life, and the lives of his wife and his son: of birthday cake, antiseptic cream, Avon perfume, French cheese tentatively chosen for special occasions, ink pressed through the pages of Robert’s homework, the sweet German wine David only ever bought at Christmas — all of it present and persisting, constituent parts of that afternoon.

It was not unusual to hear cancer patients say, as they adjusted their silk turbans or their soft knitted hats, that the disease had brought them closer than ever to their loved ones, and given them a precious perspective on life.

I imagined that I’d live, then I would die, my death a brief stop at the end of my sentence. Now I understand that death has a duration and an amplitude, with events as various and strange as those of a life. I’ve fixed on that dreary afternoon by the market square, and think of him now in these terms: that he lived for 77 years, and he died for 48 days.