Part I: Inside. Dedication
Prologue : those we lost; "Sweeping up the heart, the morning after death"
Part 2. Instead. Instead ... the first months of 2020; How Americans learned to accept that "the old" would die; A chasm opens : vital youth vs. moribund age; Consequences; On futility and "miracles"; The before time
Part 3. Ahead. The guardians of later life; In search of the missing voices; The COVID monument we need; Epilogue : reckonings
Appendix : undercounting the deaths of residents.