The Year of Magical Thinking

In Chapter 2, Didion explores the ordinariness she describes in the first chapter. On the day of her husband’s death, they visited their daughter in the hospital. Afterwards, they discussed dinner options. At home, Didion lit a fire and began to prepare supper while Dunne drank a Scotch and read. As they sat down to dinner and Didion mixed the salad, John suddenly stopped talking. When she looked up at him, he was slumped in his chair. Believing that he must have choked, Didion attempted the Heimlich maneuver before calling emergency services. Her memory of their arrival and treatment of him is hazy, but their decision to move him to a hospital was quick. When she arrived at the hospital in a separate ambulance, a social worker came to speak to her, and Didion describes this moment as the instant she knew her husband had passed.

Didion’s reaction to the news of her husband was described by the social worker as that of a “cool customer” (15). She accepted her husband’s possessions and thanked a priest for praying over her husband before heading home in a taxi. Didion continued to suppress her emotions as she put her husband’s things away and visited the mortuary to identify her husband’s body. She was determined to focus on Quintana to keep herself from displaying too much feeling.

Didion describes how a couple of weeks before Dunne’s death, he asked her to make a note in her writing journal for him because he had forgotten the cards that he usually carried for his own writing notes. He told Didion that she could use the note for her own writing if she wanted, and she saw this as a possible indication that he had a feeling he would not be able to use it. She suggests that death is often foreshadowed. The day after Dunne’s death, Didion made the necessary phone calls but declined the offer of company. She felt a primitive need to be alone in case Dunne came back, a thought she describes as the catalyst for her “year of magical thinking” (33).

Historical literature often draws a connection between grief and the trope of madness. The consensus is that grief is not a mental illness that needs medication; rather, it is something to be overcome or conquered. Didion recognizes her own loss of rationality after the death of her husband. At her core, she was convinced that there was a possibility that Dunne might return to her. She was unable to read his obituaries because their existence meant that she had allowed others to believe that her husband was dead. She likened this to allowing her husband to “be buried alive” (35).

Her disordered thinking presented itself in waves. At times, she was able to handle things while keeping her emotions at bay. In other instances, grief washed over her in waves. She was able to pack up the clothes he wore to walk in every morning. This was an important milestone that many of her friends and family members had told her she needed to undertake. Although she made substantial progress, she could not be brought to give away his shoes, since he might need his shoes if he returned. Similarly, one underlying reason for ordering an autopsy was the idea that discovering the source of his coronary arrest might enable the doctors to heal him.

Instead, Didion received a call asking if she wanted her husband’s organs donated. She felt unable to make the decision. After she hung up the phone, she realized that the caller had meant her husband’s eyes, as only these could be harvested from someone who had not been left on life support. She recognized that her anger at the caller was rooted in the idea that had plagued all her thinking: if the hospital were to take Dunne’s corneas, he would no longer have them when he needed them.

In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Didion’s life was divided into two parts: her outward appearance of calm and rationality and her inward struggle with mental illness. Didion waited to have the funeral until Quintana was stable and could attend. Three months after Dunne’s death, Didion held the funeral and publicly acknowledged the death of her husband. However, her thinking remained centered upon the possibility of Dunne’s return.

Throughout her life, Didion turned to literature to help her manage her experiences. She found that classical literature had little to offer but that more contemporary works presented insight. She learned that it was common for those grieving to give the outward appearance of calm and rationality, all while struggling to inwardly accept reality. She also discovered that many animals, including humans, died after losing a mate; she began carrying her photo identification with her at all times in case this fate fell upon her. Her studies led to the discovery of a kind of grief called “pathological bereavement,” which could occur when two individuals were unusually dependent upon one another (48). She wondered if she and her husband could be categorized in this way.

Dunne had authored a book entitled Dutch Shea, Jr. Didion believed this book to be about grief. Dunne adapted funny phrases that Quintana had used when she was little for the character of Cat. In the novel, the main character mourns the death of his daughter. Didion suspects that Dunne would have said the book was about faith, and Didion postulates whether grief and faith are the same thing. Emily Post’s Etiquette provided Didion with comfort, as the book’s description of how best to care for a grieving individual seemed relevant and empathetic. Didion remarks that prior to the 1930s, the mourning process was expected and accepted, but modern sensibilities have turned it into something private and shameful.