The Year of Magical Thinking

Didion fixates on trying to find the exact cause of her husband’s death—not the pre-existing condition of his heart issues but the actual physical occurrence that led to his death in the kitchen of their home. She claims that her rational mind understands the implications and nuances of her husband’s condition, but grief has rendered her unable to operate from a rational perspective. When she learns that Julia Child has passed, her irrational mind is consoled: at least now Dunne and Child can have dinner together.

Eleven months after Dunne’s death, Didion receives her husband’s autopsy report. The delay was partially due to Didion accidentally writing a former address on the hospital paperwork, the address of the house she and Dunne lived in after they were married in 1964. Didion pores over the reports, each time uncovering a new detail. She pieces together that her husband was dead the moment she called for an ambulance. The knowledge of this fact blends in her memory with all the pieces of foreshadowing for her husband’s death that were revealed to her as she struggled through the grief process. The report allows Didion to let go of her “what ifs,” her need to determine whether she could have done something that would have kept her husband from dying.