Diary of Fear

The review of Joan Didon's new book came to me on line. I had read another review , but this one was formidable/shattering. I realized I was not going to have the courage to read this book this year.

It is about the unexpected death of Didon's husband after a forty year marriage. She keeps his shoes irrationally knowing that he won't be able to return unless he has his shoes. Both she and he were writers, who worked together in the same house or apt; she reports she would have need to speak to him many times a day, 24, 59, more. And his death has not changed that; only the possibility of a response has been changed. (That line is lifted from review.)

I write the friend who forwarded the review to me and thank her. Say I will not be reading this book this year. I am too frightened of what Didon calls The Broken Man (death). I have had the usual deaths in my life for a woman my age, parents, loved grandparents, aunts, one good friend, old lovers, one husband after I had separated from him. But, now, in my sixties, happy with my significant other. Sharing with him the fears of age; the plans of living now/in the moment/making the most of what we have. The idea of losing that, I try to avoid. Deny it, run from it, make pacts with magical thinking. Hope I will die first. Pray I will die first.Think what a bloody coward I am. Nag him to have his yearly physical while I put off my own.

The friend who forwarded the review is 70. Her 40 year old son died four months ago. I know so many people who have had Didon's experience of life shattering from a death that was not supposed to happen. Death after death rotates in memory when I watch out for the Broken Man.

There seems so much to fear. I still keep my childhood fear of snakes. Snakes writhing up through the floorboards. No place to hide. Cancers, surprise cardiac arrest, stroke and death at a Pittsburgh baseball game.

How do we exist every day without having a part of us always looking away from reality and into our wishful, desperater mirror magic.

Is everyone as scared as I am? My aunt once said there were two kinds of women. Those whose husbands were still alive, and those whose husbands were gone. The same could be said of losing children. Not right. Not in the plan of things for a parent to lose a child. But was the Holacaust in the plan of things...or Katrina or Iraq.

Again I wonder if everyone dances with fear as often as I do.

Another reason perhaps to write. Lose myself in history, mystery, another world outside this fragile one I exist in. Here I can Xerox papers, have them bound. Make the product safe. Can even copyright it. How safe is that.

I wish she had not sent the review.

It is time to make lunch, read some in my mystery novel, and then move back to writing. I am safe there. But the dinner meatloaf is cooking. And with that preparation comes expectation of regularily and routine and safety. A lie. Claire Holcomb