essay on Joan Didion

Joan Didion tells herself stories in order to live. These stories include Joan Didion playing detective believing her husband is still alive, and writing. In Joan Didion book After Life she explains her husband’s death and how she copes with it all. One way she dealt with it was investigating things that didn’t need to be looked at. “He always carried cards which to make notes…Did he have some apprehension, a shadow?”(Didion 96). The author knew her husband always had his index cards handy for when he needed to write down a thought. After his death she questioned why he left the cards that night. She thought that maybe he had some type of look into the future where he seen his death occurring. “The A-B elevator was our elevator, the elevator in which the paramedics came up at 9:20pm, the elevator in which they took john (and me) downstairs to the ambulance at 10:05pm.”(Didion 95). This quote explains the denial that Joan Didion was going through. She was trying to find any excuse to make up for the fact that her husband was gone. Joan Didion knew her husband was dead, but reality was too hard to face. She did not want to believe that the love of her life was actually gone. “But I thought that if, as long as I didn’t let him in, he couldn’t tell me. And then it-none of that would’ve happened.”(Didion92). The author remembers after seeing a man in green scrubs, an article she read. This article detailed a mother whose 19 year old son died, and she didn’t want to believe it. Joan Didion remembers feeling like the mother saying as long as I don’t let them in to tell me none of this will be real. “The New York times knew. The Los Angeles times knew. Yet I myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final.”(Didion100). The author even though everyone else was able to cope with her husband’s lost she could not. She was not prepared to accept the days to come without him. As the pain and grief continued Jon Didion started to do what she does best. She began