Sick, but Normal

I read a very good book, loaned by my neighbor, on the subject of grief recently, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking".  In it, she described the sort of pain and irrational thought that became her habit in the year following her husband's death.  At one point, she says, getting rid of her husband's shoes seemed to be the wrong thing to do because he may need them again.  She found she often thought like a small child, that if she wanted something to be so, it was.

I keep finding my brain does similar things.  Virtually every day, I see something that Mom would like (present tense intended), or that I should call Mom about, or remember to tell Mom about.  She was my cheering section, my adorer, and my sounding board for all of my life, so I am finding that all neural pathways lead back to her. Those habits of thought and pathways in the brain are still there, even though my rational self, in the next split second, tells me that I'm off base and it's not possible to call her.  The permanence of that situation is horrifying, if I dwell on it much.  When people say, "I'm so sorry you lost your Mother.", that is apt.  I did lose my mother - she is lost and can't be found, permanently.

Joan Didion's book talks about this scientifically:

So I guess I am normal.  Sick, but normal.