In her travel journal, from her first trip to Denmark in the mid 1970s, on the page listing her personal information, on the line labeled policy—one could read it as "insurance policy"—she had written "kindness."

Gram sometimes, before she went into the care center, would wake up and say, "What time is it? I should get up." In her dreams she had babies, many of them, to take care of, somehow, while she worked in the field or cooked. She remembered a happy childhood and a difficult marriage.