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the year of magical thinking

the year of magical thinking

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(Originally published Monday, January 2, 2006)

The opening paragraph from chapter 17 of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion:

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. 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 gets 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.

In the The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion offers a most personal and particular account of the year following the sudden death of her husband. But because she is so honest, because she does not hold back any detail of her thoughts and feelings, her story provides a touchstone by which we may better understand our own grief and the grief of those we love. I recommend this book!

grief

grief

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Grief …

Grief takes something from us that can never be regained. We cannot get it back … but nevertheless what we do have is enough. We have Jesus.

Jesus is with us … and that is enough.

Faith is not magical. We do not invoke the name of Jesus and expect everything to bounce our way. Faith is mystical. Jesus is with us, at all times, in all circumstances, in this very moment … and forever. And when Jesus is with us, it is not that everything will be okay … it is that everything is okay!

“million dollar baby”

“million dollar baby”

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My daughter’s boyfriend had us all watch “Million Dollar Baby” the other night. It was a good movie — well-made, engrossing, creative, understated. It conveyed powerful emotions with spare action and spare dialogue. I enjoyed watching the movie — and I am no fan of boxing — but I didn’t like the ending.

WARNING: STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE AND DON’T WANT ME TO SPOIL IT FOR YOU!

What does give a life value?
When is suffering no longer redemptive or no longer redeemable?
When is a life no longer worth living?

I grant that I know nothing of what it is like to be in a body like Maggie’s … a body useless and wasting away. And I know nothing of being in Frankie’s position … seeing the one I dearly love in that powerless and humiliating state. But suicide for the one, assisting suicide for the other, seem too easy and even selfish. The movie creates a great deal of sympathy for that choice, paints it as a redemptive choice — letting Maggie “go out” while she has it all, instead of letting her linger and lose everything.

But what is the “everything” she risks losing? Her success, the achievement of her life’s dream? But it seems to me that the most valuable thing she gains in the course of the film is Frankie’s love. She gains a father. He gains a daughter. He grieves because she asks him to let her go. But is it not this love itself that gives her life value? That love continues, loving her always and still as she is … forever. Loving her because she is.

And that is what God’s love is like, too. Loving us as we are, just because we are. At her best, Maggie showed the strength and beauty of her spirit, her loyalty, her faith … turning down a contract with a rival manager to stay with Frank, turning away her heartless and greed-crazed family members, not letting herself be consumed with self-pity.

Would it not be fitting if Maggie’s final act of strength and beauty and loyalty and faith were to entrust herself to God — as long as she has breath, to allow Frankie to love her and be loved by her — to live in joy even in the presence of suffering for both of them, to live with courage and will and hope in the face of her greatest challenger?

As I watched the movie, I too was filled with grief at her loss, at our loss of her grace and fire and passionate physicality. But I wanted her to live, to win this last fight, not concede, to reveal to us the real depth and strength of her character. And I wanted Frankie to say “No” and stand by it, to tell her that her life was still valuable, that he loved her and that love made her life valuable, that she has not lost and will not lose anything that matters!