Jacqueline,

Over the last year or so I keep running into articles and reviews of Joan Didion’s work. I’ve never read her.

I asked a good friend of mine if she would recommend something by Didion for me. This friend of mine is well read, was an English major at UC Berkeley and we tend to like the same authors. Her answer to me was that Didion was “an aquired taste” and that although she was a prize winning author she didn’t really care for her.

Seventeen years ago I was widowed. As I struggled to make my way through the aftermath of my husband’s death this friend was a part of my life but it was clear she wasn’t supportive in the way I needed.

It is said that the death of a loved one will rewrite your address book and in my friend’s case this was true for me. I all but quit communicating with her. It was awhile before I could tolerate her lack of empathy. We are again friends, however, I protect my feelings about loss from her. She simply doesn’t understand.

After reading your article, it seems that Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking would have been helpful to me. I know my friend has read it. All these years later I still feel bitter than she didn’t offer it up as a tool for me during those early years of my grief.

And then I remember — she doesn’t really have a clue. There are a few rare souls out there who are able to comfort without having gone through loss themselves but I haven’t run into many of them. After losing my husband my address book, with all of its scratch-outs and torn out pages, was filled with others who grieved.

I’ll be purchasing a copy of Didion’s book and here’s the hard part…even though I cherish my friend and what she brings me in my life reading it will probably make me even madder that she couldn’t connect the dots for me and offer the book as helpful at a time when I really needed some help. These feelings are hard to explain and someone who hasn’t experienced loss will likely not understand where I’m coming from.

I’m not an angry person but the place where grief resides means it is never far from the surface — and that means for me it is accessible to assist others which also means it stays pretty close to the surface, not exactly scar tissue. Not that tough. More so, it is a healed over hole in my heart that can be pricked in an instant and then blessedly healed again.

Thanks for your writing about grief. Writing about it will help others. Of this I am certain.

I look for your articles. I’ve had enough time in this to consider myself down the road a ways. I don’t know how that works in the case of the death of a child. I have a daughter and I try not to let myself think of how brutal the loss of a child would be. I’m so sorry.

For me, seventeen years down the road means I am accustomed to having lost my husband. I’m remarried (to a widower — we truly “get” each other) and life goes on but that doesn’t mean grief is behind me. It also doesn’t mean I understand even an inch of what you go through. The moment I think to myself, oh yeah, I get that — is the moment I’m sure I don’t.