Image source: Goodreads
Within the span of 18 months or so, the writer Joan Didion lost her husband (quite suddenly) and her daughter (a bit more gradually but still, quite unexpected). The Year of Magical Thinking is her memoir of grieving her husband. Another book, Blue Nights, is devoted to the death of her daughter.
Joan and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, wrote movies together. In the same apartment, in what’s lovingly described as a nearly symbiotic—or, in less fancy terms, co-dependent—relationship. Don’t get me wrong, she has an impressive amount of work (novels, articles, essays) with solely her name on it. And if you google her and look at photos of her, you’ll see how she has a nearly undefinable aura of coolness and chic, from her youth until today.
That attitude extends to her writing as well, and even though she’s obviously in so much pain from losing a life and creative partner, she’s just so extremely elegant and serene about it, even in her anger: her husband had a massive heart attack that largely could have been prevented with a more healthful diet and exercise. I can tell that writing’s what she was born to do, and it’s as much an activity of survival as it is a way to cope with such colossal loss.
I’ve worked at a hospice with a thriving bereavement program, and I’ve learned that families who grieve, for the most part, agonize about the first anniversary of their loved one’s death, but they can’t really explain why. I think we’re conditioned to recognize yearly events, and death is no exception. But I also believe that experiencing that date a year later brings about a certain kind of remorseless finality, no matter how they’ve prepared for it.
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