The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. In a heartbeat. Or the absence of one." 

- excerpted from The Year of Magical Thinking

I passed this book by in Barnes & Noble time and time again before I finally relented and checked it out from the library. I don't know why I was so hesitant to read it; it had been called one of the best modern books on grief and received the National Book Award. I guess I just kept thinking, this isn't the type of grief I'm experiencing. It's about the loss of a spouse. I won't be able to connect with this one. 


But the thing I learned most from my son's early death was that I don't have a minute to waste in my relationships here on earth. They're so fleeting, and I have no way of knowing exactly how much longer I have with anyone. Every moment must be savored. After my son died (that seems to be how my life is divided now: before he died and after he died), I became clingy with P. I didn't want to lose sight of him. I wouldn't go to bed without him, I wouldn't stop holding his hand no matter where we were. It was like I suddenly understood life's transience, and it scared me. This is what Joan Didion discovered, too, upon the loss of her husband: that in a moment, everything can change.

So I did, in fact, find myself able to connect with the foundation of much of what Didion wrote about in her grief memoir even though I have not lost my spouse. I understand the experience of walking around as if in a trance, feeling unseen as you navigate the world post the death of a loved one. I understand the irrational thoughts that course through your mind, thinking perhaps there is still a way to save your loved one (though it is already too late; the heartbeat has already flat-lined). And once again, I appreciated the honesty with which this grieving widow told her story, a story that can't have been easy to tell.

Aside from the underlying truth of the book, though, I found myself wading slowly through the pages, not really fully engaged, particularly when Didion discussed her daughter's hospitalization (an important part of the story, as it paralleled Didion's husband's death, but a part that still came across as a tangent, taking up more space than necessary). For me, this wasn't a "keeper."