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On Death And Grief
Joyce Carol Oates vs Joan Didion.
JCO: born 1938.
JD: born 1934.
John Gregory Dunne: born 1932.
More later. It's too early in the morning to write on this now.
AI prompt: Joyce Carol Oates vs Joan Didion.
Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde; a fictional biograph of Marilyn Monroe.
her memoir following the death of her husband, A Widow's Story,
reviewed in The New Yorker, December 5, 2010; link here.
Joan Didion on grief:
AI prompt: was the word "vortex" when associated with grief, coined by Joan Didion or was "vortex" already used by grief therapists by then?
Gemini: while Didion may not have been the absolute first person in human history to use the word "vortex" to describe emotional pain, she coined it as a specific, widely recognized metaphor for the modern, clinical experience of abrupt bereavement.
Blue Nights: published 2011
- a memoir; an account of the death of Didion's adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael,
- died at age 39, 2005
- multiple major medical problems exacerbated by fall and subsequent intracranial hemorrage
- "blue nights": summer solstice, when the twilights turn long and blue;
- notable for its nihilistic attitude towards grief as Didion offers little understanding or explanation of daughter's death
- a companion piece The Year of Magical Thinking, published six years earlier, 2005
- following the death of her husband and hospitalization of her daughter
The Year of Magical Thinking: published 2005
- memoir; the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunner, 2003;
- acclaimed as a classic book about morning
- won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction
- drew upon her extensive notes, journaling;
- New York Times Book Review: ranked the book as the 12th best book of the 21st century;
I spent a lot of time on this subject, grief and "vortex" for a couple of specific reasons.
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On Grief
A reader, slightly older than I (I'm 76) recently lost his wife. He is overwhelmed with grief. His notes reminded me of Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking.
Joan Didion titled her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking to describe the irrational, delusional thought patterns she experienced while grieving the sudden death of her husband. She believed that her own thoughts, rituals, or unwillingness to accept reality could reverse his death, such as refusing to give away his shoes because she felt he would need them upon his return.
I have read The Year of Magical Thinking. I don't think my reader would enjoy that book. But if he did read the first couple of chapters -- I think he would find that his grief response to his wife's death is very similar to what Didion when through after her husband's sudden death per her memoir.
Me? I'm glad I read the book but I cannot relate to it all.
I had suicidal ideation for many years, particularly in my coming of age years, and I often think that had I not married I would have committed suicide. Having said that, I always returned to rational thoughts and never attempted suicide, and I doubt I would have had the "guts" to do so. But, I think that's the way a lot of folks thought and committed suicide anyway.
But I have experienced grief as profoundly as Didion has, but it was with the loss / break-up of deep heterosexual relationships. I believe I can count two such relationships. In both cases the grief was profound.
My wife and I will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary next year, March 19th. We were married in Las Vegas on the spur of the moment. We were living in separate apartments across town in the county of Los Angeles, she in west Hollywood and I in South Pasadena, both equidistant but in different directions from our place of work / study. She was working as a therapist at Los Angeles County hospital; I was in medical school there, across the street at USC-LAC medical school.
Within 24 hours of our wedding, I had second doubts, significant remorse, but I never wavered in my commitment to me wife. As noted above, I doubt I would have survived to this age had I not been married. It's hard to say.
Even harder to say is how I will handle her death. I miss her terribly when we are apart, but now the relationship is about what one would expect after 50 years of marriage. But I can't imagine experiencing the "vortex" due to that profound grief as described by Joan Didion.
My wife might. Maybe men and women experience grief differently but then I am reminded of the reader and his grief following the loss of his wife of 50+ years.
As noted, I experienced the "vortex" of profound grief on two occasions, both occurring after the abrupt end of two intense heterosexual relationships.
The "vortex" is as real as Didion describes it. The grief only goes away/dies after the love-of-one's-life has also died. For me, the first woman died about twenty years ago and I seldom think about her and can rationally discuss her with my family and friends. The other woman is still alive, very geographically separated and I've never seen her again or contacted her after we broke up but I still find myself in that vortex on occasion when I think about her. That happens less and less but it's amazing how long that grief has persisted.
The grief following those two relationships never significantly negatively impacted my life and I found no reason to seek therapy or join a "grief group." Working 24/7 in the military and raising a family (two children) and the five grandchildren did not allow me spend time in the vortex.
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