Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI just finished reading "Grief," by Joan Didion. This is an excerpt from her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, which was recommended to me a couple of years ago when we had a death in my family. Her reflections on grief helped me then, and it's interesting to read it again, at a time when I'm not grieving myself. What hit me this time was how she nails one of the things that irritated me back then, namely other people's insensitivity to people who are grieving. As if there's some kind of timetable we're all supposed to follow! She talks about the funeral as an event that many interpret as the end of grief, which I think reveals their stupidity: the funeral is -- at least in my experience -- a ceremony that marks the official start of grief, sort of like the way a wedding is the official start of a marriage.
A very worthwhile piece.
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