I want you to have decades.

Do not make me into a saint.

Make me into a warning.

That is the only monument I want.

Chapter 15 — What’s Left of the Time

The months went the way the doctors said they would, which is to say I got weaker, and the gardens got farther from the bench I could reach, and eventually Marva moved into the apartment so I would not be alone, and I let her, because I had learned by then that letting yourself be cared for is not the same as disappearing, when the caring runs both ways and no one mistakes you for a chair.