Manuela Castro’s Reviews > The Year of Magical Thinking > Status Update

“We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the case of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.”

“Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”