Biddie Reads: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I have to tell you the truth: I only picked up this book, because I saw a picture of young Joan Didion online and thought she was pretty and witty.

 (Obvi not my pic)

Call me superficial, but whatever -- at least I'm literate, and that's what really matters.  

I was a little doubtful when I bought the book, because 1) nonfictions are not my usual go-to, 2) especially memoirs about death, and 3) the cover of the book was visually uninteresting.  The whole "don't judge a book by its cover" doesn't really work for me when it comes to actually buying a book, because if I'm spending money on it, then it better look good!

Anyways, despite all this, I sat down with my stuffed animal sheep (my favorite reading companion) and read the first chapter and fell in love. 

The book is essentially about how Joan Didion dealt with the death of her husband/best friend/fellow writer, who unexpectedly passed away while they were having dinner during Christmastime.  And you know, I honestly thought this was going to be super cliched and maudlin, but it was anything but.  

First of all, her writing is incredible.  It's raw, it's bare, it's very vernacular, and it genuinely feels like she is sitting across from you and telling you all this.  Actually, let me scratch that: she's not even telling you all this, she's telling herself all this and you're just listening along.  She's not trying to dramatize the situation with superfluous words; she's not trying to lecture you on how to deal with death; and she's not trying to prove to people how strong of a person she is. 

All she's trying to do is figure out what's happening and find an explanation for herself, because she's confused and lonely and alive.

I literally had to take breathing breaks while I was reading this, because I was just drowning in every emotion in existence.  I also had to get up and hug my Mom, because I was just so thankful to still have her around.  (And because Anna Lee is my everything.)

This is my favorite quote:

"People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces.  I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others.  The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness.  It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off.  These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible.  I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal.  I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the death, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved.  I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole.  I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee.  Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief.  The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them." 

So if you want to take a break from "lolz wut" lingo and read something beautiful, read this book!  You will age emotionally like ten years, and you will also come out appreciating all the people you have in your life (which you should be doing anyways).