Tate

“Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless. Persons they normally like, they often turn from.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“In both England and the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was “to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“death of a parent, he wrote, “despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking