Laurie Witmer

“Dolphins, I learned from J. Worden of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate. Geese had been observed reacting to such a death by flying and calling, searching until they themselves became disoriented and lost.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“I wanted to get the tears out of the way so I could act sensibly.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“The 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