"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. the question of self-pity."
Synopsis (from Wikipedia)
The book recounts Didion's experiences of grief after Dunne's 2003 death of a cardiac arrest in their New York apartment. Days before his death, their daughter Quintana Roo Dunne Michael was hospitalized in New York with pneumonia which developed into septic shock; she was still unconscious when her father died. During 2004 Quintana was again hospitalized after a collapse and bleeding in her brain.
Rants & Raves
Joan narrates how she gone through grief. The thinking of "what if's", doing medical research about her husband & daughter's illness, re-living past experiences & conversations with her husband. Does her husband know beforehand about his death? Maybe most people with heart conditions, let alone, someone who has a pacemaker, knows that death is near, just lingering for the right time. Joan's account on dealing with death is so real and raw. The questions she asked herself could be the same questions we might ask ourselves someday. If I had...If only...Would it make any difference? Her insane thinking is so human. Like, she doesn't want to give away her husband shoes because he might come back and look for them.
The term "magical thinking" is when a person hopes for something enough or performs the most suitable actions then an unavoidable event can be prevented. She rewinds her everyday life with her husband and tries to reconstruct events, thinking that it might save her husband's life.
I gave this 2.75 stars. Though I love how she writes about her mental process of grieving. It was raw but it lacks emotion. It's like grief without pain. She did share her thoughts but not her feelings.
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