The Year of Magical Thinking Book Review
Dealing With Loss and the Healing Power of Grief in Dideon's Memoir
In her book The Year of Magical Thinking (Random House, 2005) Dideon recounts her year of mourning for her husband John Gregory Dunne who died December 30th 2004. His untimely death coincided with the hospitalization of their daughter Quintana, who subsequently died a few months before the book was published. But more than a memoir, Dideon's book probes the meaning of life and death as it affects the surviving spouse which makes it an excellent choice for those in bereavement.
Synoposis: The Year of Magical Thinking
Dideon describes the events leading up to Dunne’s death with journalistic precision. For four days Quintana had been lying in a coma in the intensive critical unit at Beth Israel Hospital in NYC. What looked like flu was septic shock. No why or wherefore. After visiting their daughter, she and Dunne hailed a cab back to their Upper East Side apartment. Dideon went into the kitchen to prepare a light dinner; Dunne picked up his reading, marked the page and sat down at the table. By 9:00 p.m. he was dead. He’d suffered a massive coronary and was gone by the time help arrived. In a fleeting instant, everything changes, she tells us. "We cross the border between reason and illogic."
Dunne’s death triggers a year of magical thinking when Dideon becomes lost in the vortex of memory, trying to control what was never hers to control in the first place.
“It is a question of self-pity,” she explains. There is never enough preparation or honesty for loss. Loss strips away identity. Five months after that fateful night, Dideon reopens the file that she began when Dunne died. She rereads the snatches of her grief and considers editing the first sentence: “Life changes in the ordinary instant”.
The events of Pearl Harbor, September 11th, the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina … are these not pinpricks in the universe on the ordinary days when we brush our teeth, post our mail, lock the doors before going to bed?
Dideon quotes the line from the Episcopalian bible: “In the midst of life we are in death.” Not only do we die a little each day, moving closer to the inevitable, but we also live in death’s despair, trapped by memory. The pair of shoes, toes pointed outward in the closet; the book with the page marked in place; the unpaid bill addressed to the deceased that arrives months later.
Moving From Bereavement to Healing
Dideon and Dunne were married for 40 years. They spent most of their waking hours nourishing each other’s creative energy. Words were her way to hide feelings, she discovers. Now with his passing, feelings penetrate words. But because she is so immersed in feeling, she has difficulty finding the words.
When she can find them (and she does splendidly in this memoir), Dideon looks at the way people do and do not deal with grief. She looks at life, marriage and children. She finds that grief turns to mourning, and mourning casts the seeds of renewal
The Year of Magical Thinking is not an easy read, but well worth the effort for anyone who is trying to make sense of loss and the time one must put in before real healing can take place.
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