2006/02/06
Returns to Zeller's, Magical Thinking
Well, as predicted, Mother wants me to return the jacket she bought at Zeller's last week. No big surprise there. It would have been more surprising if she had kept it. And she's "never going shopping again." Until next time.
She tells me that she gets comfort by sitting in Dennis' chair, so she wants to come over here often. I can understand that. I also get comfort from the chair. I sit there most of the time when I'm reading or watching TV. Maybe she'll come over on the weekend and babysit Suzie when I go out.
I just finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. I finished it in three hours of marathon reading. It is about her "annus horribilis" when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack and her daughter went through life-threatening illness twice. It took her a whole year before she could really believe that there was nothing she could have done to save him. She could not give away his shoes, or disturb the pile of books he had been reading, because she deluded herself into believing that, somehow, he might magically come back.
Something she wrote got me thinking. She said that one of the things she learned over the year of grieving after he died, that she hadn't really known him as well as she thought she had. I wonder how much any of us really knows our spouse. One tends to think that living together for a long time makes married people know everything about each other. I have discovered new things about Dennis that I did not know. For example, I didn't know that he had offered Margot good advice and she had appreciated that. I also did not know that he missed me as much as his blog showed when I went to visit my Dad. Dennis used to put in his blog a phrase about a man finding out upon talking to one's brothers that the Father they all knew was really a different person to each of them. I think that must be true for everyone. I've always thought of myself as being a whole bunch of different people because everyone I know sees me differently.
It's very late and I must get some sleep.
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same. Elbert Hubbard
Returns to Zeller's, Magical Thinking
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She tells me that she gets comfort by sitting in Dennis' chair, so she wants to come over here often. I can understand that. I also get comfort from the chair. I sit there most of the time when I'm reading or watching TV. Maybe she'll come over on the weekend and babysit Suzie when I go out.
I just finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. I finished it in three hours of marathon reading. It is about her "annus horribilis" when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack and her daughter went through life-threatening illness twice. It took her a whole year before she could really believe that there was nothing she could have done to save him. She could not give away his shoes, or disturb the pile of books he had been reading, because she deluded herself into believing that, somehow, he might magically come back.
Something she wrote got me thinking. She said that one of the things she learned over the year of grieving after he died, that she hadn't really known him as well as she thought she had. I wonder how much any of us really knows our spouse. One tends to think that living together for a long time makes married people know everything about each other. I have discovered new things about Dennis that I did not know. For example, I didn't know that he had offered Margot good advice and she had appreciated that. I also did not know that he missed me as much as his blog showed when I went to visit my Dad. Dennis used to put in his blog a phrase about a man finding out upon talking to one's brothers that the Father they all knew was really a different person to each of them. I think that must be true for everyone. I've always thought of myself as being a whole bunch of different people because everyone I know sees me differently.
It's very late and I must get some sleep.
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same. Elbert Hubbard
Returns to Zeller's, Magical Thinking
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