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Greetings Friends,
I was given a book to read by a dear friend whose husband died of ALS. Joan Didion’s book A Year or Magical Thinking chronicles the year following her husband’s sudden death. In late 2003, their daughter was hospitalized in the ICU with a life-threatening illness. After a day at the hospital, the couple went home, made a fire and prepared dinner. As they sat to supper, Didion’s husband of 40 years had a heart attack and died. He had a heart history, but it was sudden, unexpected and during a difficult time because of their daughter’s condition.
Didion’s an author by vocation, and it’s obvious reading her book she’s well versed in a number of literary genre’s, but the prose doesn’t dominate—her grief experience does. As with C.S. Lewis’ grief classic A Grief Observed, Didion walks the reader through her year of inconsolable grief; she documents the things that matter (caring for her daughter whose health goes from bad to worse), tries to discard the things that don’t matter—or do matter but require too much energy for her emotionally spent condition—and tries, as grievers do, to just try and keep moving forward.
Didion spent every day with her
husband. They worked together, ate together, vacationed together, and, well, did everything together all the time. So for her, it was difficult to determine where they ended and she began. A Year or Magical Thinking takes the reader through the painful experience of assessing relationships in a loss context, the intricate web of family ritual and tradition, and the sheer pain and confusion of losing a loved one.
My recommendation for reading this book is both for those that have recently lost a loved one (and may be going through your year of magical thinking), and for those farther along in the grief process to look back and see how “normal” the pain, confusion and turmoil of that first year was.
One of the things we try to do here is to say you’re not alone in this difficult journey. Didion’s book is not a clinical assessment of grief. It’s the painful, daily grind that makes up the first year of grief.
I’m including a web site listing reviews of Didion’s book if you’re interested (www.reviewsofbooks.com/year_of_magical_thinking/). I you’ve read this book or others like it, please take a moment and comment on things that might have been helpful or even things that maybe weren’t as helpful.
God’s blessing on your day.
John
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