{"id":1651,"date":"2012-07-04T12:08:41","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T16:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=1651"},"modified":"2012-07-04T14:55:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T18:55:24","slug":"about-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=1651","title":{"rendered":"About Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking<\/a>\u00a0<\/em> in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog<\/a>. Here it is:<\/p>\n

A story not so different than my own<\/strong>
\nJune 27, 2012<\/p>\n

My husband died when he was 48.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Leslie Datsis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lurking question with a death so young is: How? Was he ill? An accident? We can\u2019t help but rubberneck. Rebelling against the urge to bow to the stigma of shame associated with addiction and suicide, I usually spill my story pretty quickly. I tell them exactly what happened. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d is the usual wincing reaction. But often, there is recognition and relief because they have a story not so different from my own.<\/p>\n

My daughter was 8 years old when it happened. She felt sure all of her classmate\u2019s lived normal, happy lives. I assured her nobody gets to escape sadness, and brought her to The Den for Grieving Kids<\/a> in Greenwich. There she gathered with other children who had lost their parents and I joined the surviving spouses. We found comfort in baring our raw hearts. Our own particulars seemed terrible to my daughter and I, but we learned those left behind always have painful and complicated feelings. Over the years of going to The Den, we received and, I like to think also gave, solace to our groups. As lonely as we sometimes felt, it helped knowing we were not alone.<\/p>\n

Indeed, memoirs of grief outnumber even celebrity reveal-alls on bookstore shelves. Joan Didion\u2019s The Year of Magical Thinking<\/a> came out a year after my husband\u2019s death. I recognized her language of grief, the trance-like telling of numbness and eventually, the glimmer of feeling again. I still read memoirs of loss compulsively, as if I might find an answer to the myriad of lingering questions I will always bear like a ragged scar. My life is full of joy but not a day passes without at least a passing shadow of memory.<\/p>\n

But books like Didion\u2019s or Nina Sankovitch<\/a>\u2019s elegantly written, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair<\/a><\/em>, remind me that the survivor\u2019s intimate knowledge of mortality is not an awful thing. I know to breathe deeply the air I share for some finite time with my loved ones. To pay attention, to cherish moments and do my best to never be blithe about leave-taking, even for sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking\u00a0 in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog. Here it is: A story not so different than my own June 27, 2012 My husband died when he was 48. The lurking question with a death … Continue reading About Grief<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,20,29,4,5,6,19,7],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-grief","tag-healing","tag-living-with-addiction","tag-memoir","tag-suicide","tag-time","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-qD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1662,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/1662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}