Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking: An Overdue Invitation.

Dear Rob and Kate Callison: November 9, 2025

Many people gathered around as support after my dad’s passing last August–their words, time, and gifts strengthened my family and me beyond measure and I am grateful for it all. (Your caramels are still quite the treasure, for sure!) This weekend I finally felt strong enough to pick up the copy of Didion’s work you bought for me and allow myself to be counseled by her memoir recounting the worst year of her life: losing her husband and tending to her ill, adult daughter (who later ended up passing, too, I am sure you know). I knew it would be a balm; finishing it this morning bore that out, but in ways you could not have anticipated. 

The book had been “on my list” for quite some time. As a fan of her writing going back to my undergrad years, I admired her concise, descriptive precision balanced with her poetical, repetitive structure. I was delighted to immerse myself in that again! Anticipated critique aside, as I initially reached for the book, though, I felt my heart squeeze a bit as I tried to recall why I hadn’t read it when it came out. I remembered seeing an interview with her on some morning show and remembered connecting with her thinking, “Man, that’s going to be some heavy stuff.” 

My reading began as I grabbed my favorite blanket, a cup of tea; and turned on the space heater on our back porch. I turned first to the publication page curious to see what year it came out, hoping to connect to some memory of my own–justifying why reading this was waylaid: 2005. My eyes teared. My breath caught in my throat. When was that interview? What month? December 19th. Ah. The year I lost the baby. I had been 20 weeks along. Had just committed to seriously wearing maternity clothes. Had just told Danny he was going to be a big brother. And then the doctor told me that that was not going to happen. 

Without too much detail, November 11th, 2005 was the day for us to officially say goodbye to who would never be. I was off work from November 9th until after Christmas. (I tried to go back after Thanksgiving, but just couldn’t.) That’s how I ended up seeing the interview with Didion about her book. I did some research just now: it was a Monday after Ed left for work. Dan was 2, and might have been having his breakfast with me, but I can’t recall anything more than exercising my mourning on the couch that day. I couldn’t have read it–not then. It would have been just too much. 

Now 20 years later, nearly to the day of my greatest loss, I finished the book. And although I thought a great deal about my dad and my mother’s becoming a widow like Didion, my greater connection was to the life never lived over the one so richly enjoyed. This coming 11/11 I have the day off. Occasionally in the past, especially in the years immediately following, I would take a sick day to reflect on the last time I would ever carry a child again. Funnily enough, this year it is for a dentist appointment–as life does go on. When I called to schedule, I accepted the date and time offered thinking that on this anniversary, I would take care of the mundane, and then also allow myself another span of time to polish up on some well-deserved grieving. (I hope it is a gorgeous fall day so I can walk through Sharon Woods, the first park  Danny visited when he was an infant and where I took a beautiful photo of my dad on a picnic table near the water.) 

Over the years, once I pushed through to healing, I sought a positive adjunct for that anniversary: I began calling my dad on Veteran’s Day, thanking him for his service to our country, and for his dedication to democracy through his time in Vietnam. I cannot call him this year. 

Your gifting that book to me opened all of this up so beautifully, I just had to share it with you. Unlike Didion, there is no near-delusional thinking that dad isn’t gone, or that I could’ve done more to help him…or the baby. What is magical, though, is that people like you rise up in times like this to connect, support, and heal wounds unseen. That our humanity reminds us of each others’ pain and seeks to find solace in our collective stories that construct safe neighborhoods extending beyond geography. 

Please come for dinner this next Sunday, if you can. You need to be in our home. Walk on over, and afterward, we will walk you back to your home, across the schoolyard, under the weekend’s waning crescent, as we continue to digest all the things we know to be true. And good. 

All my love, 

Laurie