kc asked in a previous comment about the messages families find most comforting in the midst of funeral services.
What messages about life/death/John do you think Didion most needed to hear from her friends and family? What messages did she most consistently tell herself?
What have you most needed to hear when grieving a loved one?
6 comments:
Two messages that I feel are most important to vocalize at the funeral that come from my theological world view,
1. Death is not the victor, as final is death seems, in God's care our life is eternal. What EXACTLY that means? Beats me. But I trust that life continues "beyond the veil."
2. Love is not diminished by death. Love given and received is permanent and is a continual gift that we carry far beyond the day of the funeral. "your husband stays in your heart" is a crass way to express that.
I think she always needed to hear the truth. Any attempt to sugarcoat or to soften the reality through prevarication was anathema to her. She had been a writer her whole life and so had he, and they were dedicated to capturing human truths in experience and painstakingly expressing those in their writing.
One of the most touching things about their relationship, to me, was that there wasn't any competition in it. They genuinely respected each other and each other's work and gave each other wide latitude to be who each truly was. I love that he would reread her work, would read it to her face, and would tell her, with amazement and gratitude, even after decades, how damn talented she was. He knew that she was the truly gifted one in the family and his ego didn't prevent him from saying so. And for both of them, it wasn't just like someone saying, "Hey, good work." It was someone who understood WHY it was good, WHAT was good about it. They each had the gift of going through life with someone who truly, deeply appreciated what the other was about. I think that was a big comfort to her after he died.
She kept repeating "Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." She kept repeating this truth over and over again, like she had to keep reminding herself that this is the nature of life, this is the bottom line, this is what we're dealing with, even though we are usually (thankfully) in a position to not be aware of it because we are busy being content. She comforted herself with cold reality, aka the truth.
She also comforted herself, I gathered, with thoughts of how he would have liked her to act and move on. He would not have wanted her to succumb to self-pity. He would have wanted her to be strong for their daughter. He would have wanted her to keep writing. He would have wanted her to look cold reality in the face and charge on with grace and warmth.
kc, you say she needed "to hear the truth." How does that fit with the fact that this was the "year of magical thinking?"
Keeping his shoes so he can wear them when he gets back has no bearing to the truth. Nor does agreeing to the autopsy so that they can figure out what is wrong and fix it to bring him back (remember she later admits this was her motivation).
I too was deeply touched by the depth of their relationships, how completely they were woven into each other's lives. And the scene where he gives her the birthday present "don't ever tell me again you can't write" was enough to make me love John all by itself. Yet she hints in a place or two that there was also discord in the marriage. And maybe a point they contemplated separation? (don't have the book with me presently to check on that).
Curious in grief how quickly we let go of the difficult and retain only the best parts about others and relationships. Why is it so much easier to forgive the shortcomings of the dead?
I think she did want to hear the truth, in all its details. But what she did with the truth — or what it did to her — was another matter. I think she acknowledged that knowing the truth doesn't always help us to understand or feel better. Our emotions and desires just naturally take over in certain situations, no matter what our brain tells us.
I never wanted to hear anything biblical or spiritual after my dad's death. My beliefs about the afterlife were my own, and I felt confident in that. I just wanted people to tell me how much they had enjoyed knowing him, what a good guy he was. I still like to hear that, when I run into somebody who knew him.
I loved what Didion said about the earliest days of grief. Forgive my long quotation, but I thought this was a brilliant analysis:
We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably get mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.
This was my experience exactly.
Yes, thanks for copying that. That passage really stood out to me, too, as the heart of the book, especially the last sentence.
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