on loss and thanksgiving

A while ago I attended a Joan Didion reading at a church in Pasadena. She read from her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, which I still haven't read. She writes that it's:

"about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

I keep the book on my nightstand but it's become part of the clutter and background and as more books and scripts pile up around it, it becomes less of a priority. I was going through my notebook and found this from my notes from the event, which could explain my reticence in accepting Thanksgiving invitations:

"The people we would discuss loss with aren't nearby, they're across the country. And it's not what you talk about at Thanksgiving."

I should move the book to the top of the pile.