It measures itself in love, and in that final week, holding the hand of a dying man through his hardest hours, I had given him more of my whole attention, more of my undivided tenderness, than I had given anyone in a year.

Seven days is not long.

But seven days spent entirely, wholly, at the bedside of a person you are helping to die is a kind of intimacy that most relationships never reach in decades.

I had known Julian for a week.

But I had known him completely, and he me, and the silence he left behind was the size of that completeness, not the size of the calendar.

Chapter 5 — The Green Backpack