Kevin's Reviews > The Year of Magical Thinking

“grief has its place but also its limits.”

Didion chronicles her life in the aftermath of losing first her husband and then her adult daughter. She speaks courageously of the familiar, the inevitable pain and the not-so-inevitable perseverance.

Joan Didion’s story is my story.

September 20th, 2021 was my son’s 36th birthday. On September 21st, the very next day, he died in a hospital ICU of Covid.

The term ‘Magical Thinking’ is a somewhat outdated* anthropological designation. It refers to spiritual conceptions of cause and effect. “The rains will come if we appease Krull with a dance” - that sort of thing. (*Any beliefs that weren’t held sacred in western culture were labeled “magical thinking”)

In grief, our rituals are often subtle. Somehow I thought that if I kept Joshua’s number in my phone or if I kept saying “my kids” (plural) instead of “my kid” (singular) then Josh wasn’t really gone. That was my magical thinking. Of course I knew the truth in my head, it was my heart that desperately grasped for the magic.

Six months ago, when Joshua was still very much alive and texting me daily about Sooner football and/or Chinese food (his favorite), this would have been a sad book to read. Three months ago, when I was divvying up his urned ashes between myself, his mother, his best friend Tony, and his beloved Aunt Pam, this would have been an impossible book to read. But now, in the midst of my own year of magical thinking, I find Joan Didion cathartic, helpful even.

I know at some point I’ll be able to say the ‘d-word’ and ‘Joshua’ in the same sentence without wincing, but not yet. At some point Josh will be that picture on my desk and those old HotWheels in my library and thirty six years of memories in my head and nothing more, but not yet. For now I still drive by his house and collect his mail. I still say “my kids.” I still have his number in my phone.