05/03/2026
One of the lines from,
‘The Year of Magical Thinking’,
that’s always stayed with me is this:
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”
When I first read that,
I remember thinking,
‘Yes…that’s it!
We think we understand grief.
We’ve seen it.
We’ve stood beside others in it.
We’ve sent sympathy cards and gone to services.
But when it becomes ours,
when it’s the person who shared our bed,
our history,
our ordinary days,
we realize we had no map at all.
Because grief isn’t just sadness.
It’s disorientation.
It’s the strange logic of magical thinking.
It’s expecting to hear their key in the door.
It’s saving their voicemail.
It’s not wanting to give away their shoes.
(That was me!)
Joan Didion wrote about that invisible landscape so honestly,
the way the mind tries to bargain with reality,
the way the heart refuses to accept what the facts already know.
If you’ve ever thought...
“Why am I acting like this?”
“Why can’t I just accept it?”
You’re not crazy...you’re grieving.
Because none of us know this place...until we arrive in it.
-Gary
