Ben C. Davis

An incredibly raw account of grief. The hole that's left behind. Written the year after her husband died, Didion puts on paper an experience all of us will either live through ourselves or cause those closest to us to live through themselves. She writes far beyond the platitudes that typically surround death, and instead she puts into words an experience that is to all of us unimaginable right up until the moment it's not.

I found it beautiful. Terrifying, too. To read her words, knowing that her daughter died soon after, and that she would die herself 18 years later, is a strange experience. It's terrifying because you can't help but grieve along with her. You can't help but anticipate the grief you one day will experience.

As I've gotten older, the struggle of my internal life seems less to do with daily events, and much to do with the impossible relationship I have with time. Time is always there. It dictates every moment, and lays bare every inevitability. It causes the regret of our unlived lives in the past, the boredom of our neglected present, the excitement and anxiety of our futures, and, as Didion makes very clear, it punctuates our grief with the reminder of what we've lost and what we'll one day become.

The scaffolding of our lives is built around those we spend it with. When that scaffolding dies, so does our lives with them. To rebuild a life anew is to be reborn, but into a life we didn't want, a life that we denied would come, but a life that time made inevitable.

Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn. Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day by Delmore Schwartz