It Only Hurts When I Breathe

"I don't know why I'm doing this to myself," I said to the man at the deli who saw me reading this book and remarked that he thought it was excellent. I mean, yes, it is, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to read.

One December evening, after visiting their daughter in the ICU, Joan Didion and her husband sit down to have dinner, and he suddenly dies. Right there at the kitchen table.

What follows in this book is Joan's journey through her grief. She doesn't go to support groups, she doesn't turn to religion. What she does do, without meaning to, is slip easily into denial quite often. John will be home soon. I can't donate John's shoes to charity; he'll need them when he gets home. She eagerly reads over the results of the autopsy. There is something about if I can just find out why this happened it can be undone. That's the magical thinking. He's not really dead. It's the disconnect from reality. If you don't accept the fact then you don't have to hurt because he's not actually gone.

My mother died when I was 21, but there was nothing sudden about it. She had a long, slow battle with breast cancer that spread. For a long time after that, it didn't seem real. I was there, physically there, holding her hand when she died. But I still sometimes expected her to come home. There were times I would forget for a second; a song would come on the radio and I'd think, "I'll have to tell her I heard this." Then I would remember. But that's not even what I'm talking about. There was also the magical thinking.

That whole year was an alternate reality. For months, I would hear, "I'm sorry about your mom." The first person to say it was my then-boyfriend's mother. I called him after everything calmed down from the spike of activity. I was alone in the room with her when she died. I'd told her it was OK to let go, and she did. And then I freaked out. My dad was at the pharmacy getting more pain medication and we'd never talked about what exactly to do at the moment it happened, and I lost my mind. I called 911, which was exactly the wrong thing to do. They swooped in and did CPR until my dad could produce the hospice paperwork stating that they shouldn't be doing that. One of my sisters noticed the neighbors all standing outside on our normally very quiet street, staring at the ambulance in the driveway, and she started yelling at them. "My mother just died! That's what happened! Go home now! Stop staring at us!" Dad calmly brought her back inside. I called my aunt and just said "She's gone." That's all I could choke out. Then I called my boyfriend because my aunt and I couldn't bear to stay on the phone; she called my grandmother. My boyfriend was at work, but his mother answered. When she said he wasn't home I just said it again. "She's gone." "Oh, Chrissy, I'm sorry."

I'd just started my job two weeks before. I took a week off for the services and the day I came back, people I had only seen once or twice were coming up to me. "I'm sorry about your mom." "I'm sorry about your mom." It would blindside me sometimes. I even heard it at a chiropractor appointment. I went to see a doctor because for some reason I was storing all my stress in my right shoulder. It was at the point where turning my head was painful, and for some reason I thought a chiropractor would help. After my appointment, I was paying the receptionist and she said, "I'm sorry about your mom." I said, "How did you--" "That lady who just went in after you is your sister's French teacher. She told me." Is it crazy that that enraged me? Because it enraged me, but I said thank you and left.

Everyone was well-meaning but it was so stressful. First of all, I really wanted to compartmentalize and not think about home at work. That wasn't happening. Also, nothing to be sorry for... because the whole thing just felt like a lie. When I would tell people my mother died, a voice in my mind would say, "No she didn't! Why are you saying that?"

This past fall I went to the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Kent, CT. One of the events was a screening of a film made by Edward Herrmann's daughter called Home. Edward Herrmann, known to all of us as Grandpa, died of brain cancer, and his daughter made a beautiful short film about magical thinking called Home. In it, a young woman can't accept her father's death to the point where she keeps looking for him and trying to call him. I told Emma after the film that I got it.

Mom died almost 19 years ago and I still look for her.

Home by Emma Herrmann: