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Looking for Love
In the Age of COVID
Joan Didion is, arguably, my idol (although I cannot leave Diana Ross out of this conversation). But in the writer’s world, she is the one. If you follow me, once in awhile you’ll see quotes of her work in my stories. It’s because they are raw, and they tear at my heart. What she has been through.
However, my favorite single quote of hers, and maybe of all time, comes from her book, “The Year of Magical Thinking”. (Get this: I didn’t even know what magical thinking meant until I started dating a narcissist.) It goes like this:
“Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.”
Death comes in many forms. In the above instance, it had to do with the death of her husband occurring at, of course, the dinner table. Life changes in the instant. I used that quote in the eulogy for my son, who died of suicide last year. News of his passing was much the same.
For Joan Didion, that was a double whammy. It wasn’t just the death of her husband, but the death of a relationship and companionship that had lasted forty years.
My relationship had only lasted a paltry eight years. That was after a marriage to a woman for 13 years…
