Vortices

I listened to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking a few weeks ago. It’s in the standard bibliography of grief books. I didn’t read it three years ago, because her experience seemed so different from mine: her husband had a massive heart attack. A husband of thirty-nine years, dying at the dinner table. A world apart from a 26-year-old son dying of leukemia. But, she’s an excellent writer, articulate, honest, and insightful, and her memoir of grief helps me process mine.

Without warning, memories suck her into a powerful vortex of grief. It happens in places with a connection to her husband. She tries to avoid the places, but there are too many memories in too many places.

My vortices are fewer and further between these days. The most constant is listing my children. The winter before David died, we rented a house in the Catskills for our annual family ‘Summer Retreat’ in August. Not knowing if we would even use the house, we had done no further planning. He died Wednesday, August 12th. On Sunday we had the visiting hours at our former-funeral-home house, followed by a service at church. Monday we packed quickly and left for the Catskills That afternoon, as I sat in front of a large picture window in the country kitchen, I started a menu plan and grocery list for the week: days across top of the page and people down the side. Jim, Mary, R’el, Peter, Matt... and I was plunged into an emotional chasm that took my breath away. For 26 years, there was no hesitation. It was always Matt, David, Annie. Now there was a gaping black hole after Matt’s name and before I could get to Annie’s.

That vortex remains. Early on, I’d name my children in random order, but that would confuse me and I’d desperately count, unsure if I was missing a living child. Without consciously thinking about it, I settled into naming the three oldest (David is the fourth), then the sixth and fifth. That still leaves me befuddled: it feels like way fewer the six minus one. But I just can’t go in age order; my heart rebels. Trying to avoid a vortex, I find myself teetering on the edge.