One does not fear for what has gone, one fears for what has not. Joan Didion.
Type A book with the prints put on the wounds you can cauterize them a little, because sort words cure. Thus, the inventors of stories they build with letters the house they always wanted to have or they give themselves a better version of their time. draw with words the face of a son who was never born can be loved instead of missed. With that mastery, enjoyed by few, Joan Didion tells us about the emotional consequences of the disappearance of loved ones or those who never came. She does it being agnostic, and that condition, she presents a singular version on the duel.
his novel blue nights it is an intimate chronicle of what happened to her when, in a very short period of time, her husband and her only adopted daughter died. Joan will not be able to put, as if she were Mexican, a altar of the dead remembering them because she is also in the non-place where she thinks the three of them are now gathered. For those who have a faith, unlike the author, it must be easier accept the departure of those who love each other because religions offer consolation, and in almost all of them, death is only about changing the way of existing. But when there is no such safeguard, the pain is administered differently, but without a doubt, it is the same for everyone. That is why, I repeat, his text has a special value.
In the first paragraph, he explains the origin of the title of his novel: “…as the summer solstice approaches…, a few weeks at most,… the twilights turn long and blue… it happens in New York, which is where I live now… it is exactly that the cold loosens —in fact, the cold does not loosen at all— and yet suddenly summer seems close, a possibility, even a promise”.
Bathed in that suggestive color, I share with you some of Didion’s conjectures related to the death of a child without God, non-parenthood and adoption. She links these two issues by saying: “When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children…” And if they die before us or simply were never born, it is possible to identify that link.
Didion adopted Quintana in 1966 and buried her thirty-two years later. She kept her daughter’s memories and objects (cardboard with candid drawings, childhood uniform, funeral announcements…). She soon realized that neither consoles. For objects, she maintains, there is no satisfactory solution and memory adjusts to what we think we remember.
In my case, I know the anxiety that throbs in those of us who couldn’t be parents. This anxiety remains over time, and for this reason, some decide to adopt. Later, one day the son looks for his biological parents and the restlessness reappears. As it happens in the novel with Quintana.
The writer says about it: “There is a time when one believes that the family is closed, but there is always the lurking of two impulses: the remorse of who left and the need to know where it comes from.”
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In addition to addressing such painful issues, the novel is a journey that allows us to see how film scripts are written because that was her and her husband’s job.
Perhaps we all think like her: “I thought that blue nights could last forever…” But it’s not like that, while they’re leaving, we have to hug our loved ones.
#approach #death