"My Grandma Kitty is going to die today. I don't state this for shock value, but rather because any forthcoming narrative about my own life over these past few weeks would trivialize Katherine if she was treated as a plot point, an element in an interest curve, or a catharsis amid a story about my own inconsequential troubles. Grandma Kitty is none of these things. She's my mother's beloved mother, and later today she's going to die."