In the very first words of her book “The Year of Magical Thinking”, Joan Didion writes:
Life changes fast.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity (Didion, 2007, p. 1).
In these words full of despair, the author shares her point of view on how soon and how dramatically everything may change for a person who suffers the death of a loved one; such change occurs suddenly, on an ordinary day when the sun is shining brightly as usual, and the sky is blue and peaceful. In December 2003, Didion’s husband suffered a heart attack at the dinner table. They lived together for forty years. This terrible loss became a crucial moment in Didion’s life just as it happened to millions of women in the world. Didion’s “magical thinking” or a special state of mind helping her to cope with her loss appears to be the main factor of her recovery from grief.
The first words of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” have a deep meaning; the one which is very clear for those who had to go through the sudden death of their loved one. The author says that life changes fast, and this is the truth especially when one’s nearest and dearest are gone. A few minutes pass and the one who had been near for decades to offer his care and love was gone forever. Only his bathrobe is still in the bathroom, his favorite food is still in the kitchen, his footwear is still next to the entrance of the house…but the person is gone and will never come back. Instead, a feeling of the ever-growing grief comes with endless thoughts on what could be done to avoid this death and then comes madness. Joan
Didion calls this madness a “magical thinking”. In her further comments, Didion explains that by magical thinking she implicates the way little children think: they are dreamers who constantly search for ways to perform a miracle by the power of their wish. Many children believe that if they direct all their thoughts, and concentrate all their dreams around one idea, this idea will be brought to reality. The same way of thinking Joan Didion had initially. She found herself in an unreal situation continuing for long weeks when she believed that her strong love and deepest wish may bring her husband back to life again, or will simply return him from some trip, as at times she believed that he had been just out of house for some time. Such magical thinking helped the woman to live through a few weeks and even a few months without being fully absorbed with her grief. However, Joan was much stronger than only calming herself down by unreal ideas; she began to act to conquer her grief and go ahead.
To deal with her husband’s sudden death, Joan Didion went through a few stages of recovering. The first and the most troublesome stage when the grief had been the strongest was overcome by means of magical thinking; actually, magical thinking strategy was applied by the woman during a year, not only in the initial months when this way of thinking had been used by Joan in the most intensive way. Through the whole book, we may read the way the author comments certain details of her life with her husband and regrets that she did not notice some signals warning her about John’ s sudden death. For instance, when she remembered about John’s father and the reason of his death (it was a cardiac arrest), Joan wrote that that sign was important for her to protect her husband from a possible heart attack, but she failed to do so. The other important point which helped Didion to overcome her pain was her memories. She thought about the great time spent with her loving husband, and those memories suggested her that the life was worth living, and she would continue living to inform the others about the value of every single moment of their life.
In conclusion, I must say that Joan Didion’s experience is of great use for me as a social worker. Meditating on her example, I could readjust my view on the helping process in the case of grieving. First of all, I realized that individuals who suffered a death of a loved one need someone to talk to, the one who will be patient, and will listen without interruptions for hours. In Didion’s book, I noticed the following phrase which encouraged me to think on how affected people may feel: “He was on his way home from work—happy, successful, healthy—and then, gone” (Didion, 2007, p.4). This is what happens to many people before their death; nothing is bad, they are seemingly healthy and there are no signs of future grief for their relatives. People who suffer a death of their loved one unexpectedly are in a special group of risk; unexpectedness of what happens can easily make them mad. With regards to this, I found remarkable the following words by Didion describing what she felt:
This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then Months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life (Didion, 2007, p. 7).
Such feelings are very common for those who experience sudden grieving. Understanding this, I decided to have my objective to help grieving people maintain their healthy understanding of life; so that they would not lose sense in life, and could continue living despite of what happened in their families. I also noticed that Didion was able to feel better when she reflected on happy years spent with her beloved one as on a precious gift from life. Thinking on this important point, I come to a conclusion that when a grieving person is willing to talk about the good times spent together with the one who passed away it would be very helpful for such person if I will listen to her or him, and will share these memories with him or her as this would bring the person a warm feeling of relief.
Reference
Didion, J. (2007). The year of magical thinking. New York: Vintage Books.