Ordinary Instant

After reading the first couple of pages of Joan Didion’s “Magical Thinking” I felt kind of light headed. She narrated everything with great detail that made me feel as if I was with her precensing her husband’s death.  As I was reading how her husband had died I couldn’t stop to think about the things that have happened in my life that have come to me as a shock. As it did for her.

Joan Didion was having an ordinary dinner with her husband and in an “ordinary instant… he was gone.”(4) Joan Didion expressed John’s death in an honest and detailed way that reminded me to those “ordinary instants” that have changed the lives of people I know. Recently, one of my good friends was riding his motorcycle in the track. It was an “ordinary” activity he did on weekends, and a fall turned into one that changed his life in an “ordinary instant.” Now he isn’t able to walk, and his life transformed in a matter of seconds. When I was told about this tragedy I didn’t believe it, or at least I didn’t want to. It came to me as a shock, as it did for Joan Didion. Although I wasn’t there to presence it, I presenced the outcome later on, and never had I experienced something so unreal but real at the same time. At first I couldn’t accept the fact of my friends reality. Neither could Joan. But as time has passed, and we have all faced his reality I can process easier this tragedy.

What I have learned from my own experience as well as from others, is that there are many different types of pain, grief and also different ways to approach it. I know of many people that ignore the new reality that they are living as a mechanism of defense so that they don’t suffer. Others are very open about it, do some sort of activity, or others write about it like in Joan Didion’s case. And that is what has made me reflect about how I’ve dealt with the hard things in life. I realized that many times I have written down my frustrations, pain and grief. It is a way to let out what I am feeling without others realizing it, as I am doing now. This doesn’t mean I don’t talk about what I feel, but I can understand why Joan Didion sometimes goes around in circles and includes so many details. It’s a therapy.

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” –Joan Didion