is someone trying to tell me something?

gOoD gRiEf. i just plowed through joan didion's new memoir, the year of magical thinking. a fact that, most likely, i wouldn't even bring up here since i've never used this forum to approach this subject, except that it touches on a part of my life that i cannot seem to escape at the moment. so i figure why not write a little bit about all of this here?

who knows what exactly took my sunday morning errands in the direction of a bookstore. i was not in need of a book, having just begun middlesex and so far thoroughly enjoying it. yet, i still somehow found myself with joan didion's book in hand, moving towards the cashier, all the while thinking, "do i really need this?" evidently, some part of me said, "yes." because i bought it. opened it. and couldn't put it down.

perhaps you have read the reviews, the press surrounding its publication and release and know what it is about. perhaps you haven't. in a nutshell, it is a memoir detailing the year in joan's life following the sudden hospitalization (and near death) of her daughter on christmas of 2003 and the fatal coronary her husband john gregory dunne suffered at the dinner table on december 30, 2003.

so i go about my business on sunday, trying to cross items off of my ever-increasing "to do list," and, on my subway ride to manhattan for my bikram class, i open the book and begin reading. i don't want to stop once i have started it. her account is captivating. and honest. and familiar. my father, at the age of 41 and, according to the last physical examination he had been given, in good health, dropped dead from a massive coronary in the middle of the chicago o'hare airport while making a connection on his way from boston to las vegas for a business trip. this was in 1988. i was 9 years old.

so i begin to read this memoir and i find myself identifying with joan's experience. i am appreciating her detail, her forthright manner, her lack of preaching or advice or judgment or *chicken soup for the soul* feel good bullshit. i wish that this had been written 17 years ago. i am aggravated all over again by how many bad books there are about death, loss, mourning, and grief.

i get up on monday morning, continue reading on the subway on my way to work, arrive at work and check my email. not surprisingly, since i do not have internet access at my apartment, there are a lot of new emails. i notice that i have gotten some from my grandmother and one of my aunts (on my father's side of the family) with subjects related to john edwards. john edwards? wow, i did not realize they were so political. i start to wonder what he has been up to since the election anyway. i open the email from my grandmother who basically says that they had a great interview with john edwards and we should read the message below from my dad's cousin janice for more detail. wait, did they interview john edwards or did he interview them? either way, how did this get set up?? why didn't i know this was going to happen??? what did they talk about? the war? social security? healthcare? i scroll down as suggested. janice's recap of saturday's events begin. i've got the wrong john edwards. they are referring to john edwards of crossing over with john edwards fame. that guy who *talks* to dead people. my grandmother and two of her nieces (my dad's cousins, my second cousins) went to a taping of his show on saturday. and, yes, johnny boy sought them out with messages from my father and my grandfather among others. hello, it's 8:48am on monday morning, what did you just say? dad says hi? or john edwards says that dad said hi to you, thanks for keeping his memory alive? nice thing to find out about over email before 9:00am on a monday morning while you are at work moments away from walking into the weekly firm meeting. i'm sure i was really sharp and seemed totally present during that meeting. hey, guys, don't mind me over here, i've just been reading a memoir about grief that is making me remember and reexamine a number of events in my own life and my grandmother thinks that she just spoke with my dead father through john edwards.

i immediately become confused and somewhat emotionally overwhelmed. my instinct is not to believe this. my opinion has been that these *readings* are a set up by a very perceptive and manipulative individual who has keen skills at reading people's faces and energies and a knack for making vague and generic comments. vague and generic comments that, when heard by an individual who is seeking meaning in them, desperately seeking meaning in them, become specific and undeniable signs.

but is it at all possible? had i been there would he have said something to me? would i have believed it?

why am i even asking those questions? because, though i hate to admit it, the whole idea pulls at that desperate place in me, that 9 year old who went to bed one night and was woken up the next morning by a police officer at the front door who had come to let her know her father was dead, who wants more than anything to believe that there is a way to bring him back, there is a way to say the goodbye that never happened, there is a way to have just one more day, one more minute with him.

i also begin to feel embarassed. that this is going to air on john edwards' show sometime next spring. this is mildly to moderately humiliating. and in some ways i feel it cheapens and makes a mockery of my loss. parading it around on some terrible television show like that.

so confused, overwhelmed, embarassed, and disgusted, i go back to my email to find that hunting season is now officially open among my family. my father was the oldest of 8 children and pretty much every one of them has taken a turn in the past 72 hours. the religious right has warned us about going to hell for all time by listening to satan in the form of people who pretend they can communicate with the dead. the i'm past menopause and may never be emotionally stable again contingent, my mother among this demographic, has shot back epistles telling the religious right where they can shove their beliefs. my grandmother, almost 80 years old, cannot believe she has caused all of this fuss and anger and emotion and strife. there are calls for fence mending. cries of i only warned you about the imminent damnation of your soul out of love. there are attempts to slide past it all with a little humor. who knows where this will all come out in the end. it is clear that each of us feels very strongly about our relationship with my father and that over the past 17 years we have each developed our unique relationship with our grief and way of coping with the loss, or perhaps of incorporating it or not incorporating it into our lives. and now we are faced with this event that simultaneously forces all of us to reexamine our position in a very public way.

i have finished didion's memoir. i finished it last night. when i first started reading it on sunday i regretted that it had not existed 17 years ago. but, after the events of this week, i am grateful that it was published now and that i picked it up on sunday morning without any good reason.

who knows, maybe my grandmother got a message from my father through john edwards and his vague images and clues, i guess that's for her, not me, to say. but maybe i got my own message from my father in the form of an instinct in spoonbill & sugartown bookstore on bedford avenue sunday morning.