I find myself reading [[The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion]] in order to make sense of my [[walking through grief]], not only from this year, but from all the years since the pandemic. The people lost. The years lost. I am astonished at how [[Joan Didion]] lost her husband, then her daughter within such a short span of time. My mind mulls this over because it considers, as if it were a new realization, the fact that very little is within our control. My fiancé and I are planning our wedding. We fully expect to commit to one another, live long lives together, possibly/hopefully with kids in our future. But all of that could simply not happen for one reason or another out of our control. Didion's husband passing, while sudden and unexpected, maybe a little premature, is not unreasonable. He was 71. Within a marriage, it is highly likely that one spouse will bury the other. But to lose her daughter (not covered in this book, but indulge me skipping ahead) is completely unreasonable. Parents don't typically expect to bury their children. But it could happen. And no amount of magical thinking will change it if it does. How does one move past that? How does one overcome? We could split hairs over the definition of overcoming, but sometimes I doubt that anyone truly overcomes. The people in my life who I know who have experienced grave loss - they may function, they may even function admirably, but I can feel the ghosts of their losses echoing in their actions, words; dare I say it is written all over their faces. One of my aunts lost everything in an awful (more awful than usual) divorce, counseling me to ensure I keep separate bank accounts and get a prenup and work as much as I can. After losing K my friends and I made a Life360 circle, started sharing locations, pressing everyone to text once they got home. Attempts at omniscience, to make us feel omnipotence, to grasp at a semblance of control. Maybe if we could have *known*, we would have been able to do *something*. Maybe if we become better at knowing, we can do more in the future. Echoes of loss. What Didion I have in common: the training to go to the literature. To read. To use the words of others to make sense of things we don’t understand. Another thought that resonates with me here - her network of friends and ppl, herself included, that believe that everything can be managed if they can just understand it. Something can be done, someone can be called. I can see it as she writes about how she reads the medical literature, understands terminology about embolism and brain damage, one needs to understand to feel like they could do something about it, to feel like they could have done something about it. If we could understand better what was happening we could have avoided it. Or maybe if we could understand better we could prove we did the right thing. I can hear this line of thinking whenever my eldest cousin or my dad talks about Uncle E. Eldest cousin in particular always recaps the medical history, the details that trickled in from his doctors and nurses at Montefiore, to justify his decision to pull the plug. To know and decide again that this made sense. That it was the right thing to do. I am interested in her observation that lack of sufficient appreciation had become a theme. Not sure what's there yet, but something's there. What Didion calls [[vortexes that remind you of what you lost]] - these little details, sceneries, places, those moments that are like minefields. A street she used to drive on. A hotel she stayed at with her husband. Her daughter's wedding day. I imagine all the things that could one day be my vortexes if I had to be without him. Grand Central. A funny meme. I find myself panicking that one if us will inevitably have to bury the other. I nag him about his vegetables, his diet, eating healthy, working out. If I do this maybe he will live forever. Maybe I won’t have to bury him. Magical thinking. I found myself thinking about K again at a party for a christening the other day, the daughter of a coworker/good friend of my mom’s. Saw the kids running around the party, playing the games, dancing, in one of those event venues on the Long Island Sound, not altogether different from the one my wedding will be at. And again I think about K’s family. How they will miss him at many more christenings. How we will miss him at our wedding. How we will miss him at our children’s christenings.