A Pair of Memoirs Not for the Faint of Heart
There’s a well-known scene in Gilmore Girls where diner owner/heart throb Luke’s “dark day” rolls around, and much of the rest of the episode is spent with Lorelai trying to find out why he shuts the diner and disappears on this very same day each year. Turns out, it’s the day his father died, and Luke takes that day each year to retreat alone with his grief.
I think about that scene a lot each year in the days between September 22 and October 22, the days that mark my mom’s birthday and the day she left us in 2018, the last month I spent with her, when the greatest loss, pain, and grief I’d known became my companion. I wouldn’t necessarily call any of those days my “dark days”, but I certainly do recognize the draw to retreat alone with one’s grief during that time each year, and I try my best to prepare in advance.
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This year, my preparation came in the form of two memoirs about loss, love, and grief, and one special pair of hand-forged gingko leaf earrings from my favorite metalsmith jewelry maker.
The first memoir came to me while wandering through the shelves of the Maine Bookhouse — a gorgeous used bookshop just down the road from our new stomping grounds — when I saw a first edition copy face-out and picked it up for just $12.
I’d been eyeing Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for years, but it never seemed like the right time to read it.
Until it was.
Didion is, of course, iconic, and The Year of Magical Thinking has long been touted as the book on grief and loss.
I devoured it. I found magic on every page, along with heartbreak, self-examination, and a resonance so deep I can’t quite find words to explain it. It felt like soul-salve.
Funnily enough, a few short days after I finished, I read these words about Didion in Simple Abundance:
“If any writer has ever lived between the lines of her work, it’s Didion, who creates a cozy, confidential, even conspiratorial sojourn with her reader, hinting at self-revelation without the slightest intention of disclosure. Yet what she does reveal is breath-gasping, a piercing honesty that stops you in your tracks. As you shake your head and read that paragraph again to make sure this isn’t some mystical incantation, suddenly, like a phantom, she’s vanished, leaving behind an intoxicating aura in her wake; disappearing in a fragrant fog of unforgettable poetry-like prose.”
~ SBB, Simple Abundance, pg. 412
I couldn’t agree more.
I’m so glad I read Magical (I call it by its nickname now). It was absolutely a “right book, exactly at exactly the right time” experience, and I’m incredibly grateful for it.
I then proceeded to fall down the Didion rabbit hole and started reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean — a gorgeous collection of her essays written in the years between 1968 and 2000 — and I put Blue Nights — her memoir about the loss of her daughter — at the tippy top of my Libro wish list.
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The second memoir I read this month, Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest memoir All the Way to the River, is even more heart-wrenching, if that’s possible. I had pre-ordered it, so it was ready and waiting for me in my Libro app on the morning it hit shelves everywhere. And although I knew the story would be about the excruciating days of suffering and loss before and after her friend-turned-partner Rayya Elias, I wasn’t prepared for what she shared in those pages. Not even close.
Yet, I’m glad I read it, speeding through like the ripping of a band-aid, finishing the audio version in five short days.
It was brutal.
It was also complicated, with messages about addiction, faith, personal exploration, and sexuality that pulled me out of my comfort zone again and again. But it gave me these gifts. . .
#1 — Deeper empathy for people unlike myself, something this country could use a whole lot more of right now, in my opinion
#2 — Reassurance that my family is not alone in what we went through during my mom’s cancer battle and excruciating death
#3 — A strong urge to write, something I can always count on the lovely Big Magician Liz Gilbert to provide.
I highly recommend it.
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I miss my mom. I hate that she’s not here to see her six grandchildren growing into the smart, passionate, kind, empathetic adults, teens, and tweens they are today. She would have turned 64 this year, a number that no doubt would have found her making jokes about growing too old, jokes I would give so much to hear in that sweet voice of hers right now.
But I’m so grateful for women who write about hard things. So grateful two of their memoirs came my way this September.
I’m choosing to believe my mom sent them to me :)
Thank you to everyone who responded to last week’s poem message, “Privacy, Choice, Authenticity” — I find so much strength in your stories, and I feel so lucky to be able to share words that resonate with you.
Fall has officially arrived in all her glory here in western Maine, and the leaves are transforming into full fall foliage splendor more and more each day right now, and it’s such a treat to watch (photo proof below).
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I hope this week has been good to you, my dear. And should you need a friend, I’m only an email away.
Always.
💛
Celeste
