Below are some words of encouragement by Joan Didion to support and help a grieving heart.

10. We imagine things – that we wouldn’t be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it.

11. There’s a general impulse to distract the grieving person – as if you could.

12. Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.

13. I couldn’t give away my husband’s shoes. I could give away other things, but the shoes – I don’t know what it was about the shoes, but a lot of people have mentioned to me that shoes took on more meaning than we generally think they do… their attachment to the ground, I don’t know – but that did have a real resonance for me.

14. Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me – how really tenuous our sanity is.

15. I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

16. Do not whine… Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.


https://ayietim.com/2022/05/28/top-25-joan-didion-quotes-on-grief-storytelling-self-respect-and-life/