A Good Read

For months, The Year of Magical Thinking, has been on my bedside table waiting to be read. I find it most interesting that I finally chose to read it during Holy Week for it is a story of living after a loved one’s death. Well-known writer, Joan Didion, explores her experiences and thoughts during the year following the death of her husband. This is not an overwrought widow’s sentimental account that will evoke great emotion on the part of the reader, Neither is this written with the voice of one on a spiritual journey, but rather as a wife’s honest struggle to make sense out of her time of grief by reconciling what was in her marriage to her new state of being.

Didion’s matter-of-fact writing style with engaging use of language immediately captured my attention. She reflects on the difficulty of change and letting-go as she copes with her grief as the result of her husband’s death. During this same time period her daughter, their only child, was critically ill. Sometimes she seems to so detach herself from these events through this exploration of her mental state that I was left wondering how she is healing her heart. She did indicate that she sought answers through literature and uses brief quotes from some of the authors. Didion also references her Episcopalian background. However, we really are given little insight to her inward journey during this time.

In her year of mourning, Didion does seem to arrive at some state of acceptance of what she understandably has been resisting. Throughout the book, her italicized refrain is
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as
you know it ends.

In her suffering she realizes that she has never been very amenable to change and finally surrenders her illusion of control. Her husband's words keep repeating to her:
Why do you always have to be right.
Why do you always have to have the last word.
For once in your life just let it go.

I found this psychological adjustment based on pragmatic reflection to be exemplary of much of the contemporary experience of grief and I can maybe too easily say that I have what I think to be a well-grounded faith that offers comfort and hope. For as Didion says, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” Therefore, I recommend this to be well worth reading and would like to know what other readers think about it.