Cigarette

I still smell smoke

Rich had stopped smoking for years. I was angry and unforgiving of the incident that set him off again. When he did smoke it was never in the house.  

I smell smoke in the house. 

Joan Didion, THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING p.60

The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 DEATH, GRIEF, AND MOURNING, has described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new "ethical duty to enjoy oneself", a novel "imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others." In England and the US the contemporary trend was 'to treat mourning as a morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything has happened." 

A friend, and business associate, gave me the Didion book this week. We walked Mt View Cemetery. She walks there every day since her husband, 53, suddenly died two months ago.

Neighbors ex taking care of him, 59. Hospice. 

Two little motherless ones and their dad, neighbors. Their grandparents, my name sakes.

Bereavement group, five of us sharing the job of finding stepping stones.

Best friend, my hand holder, guide. Her husband just a year before Rich's diagnosis.

Two best friends, parents. Commiserate.

My dad popped up in this grief, sparked by July 4th. My mom, the egg toss at German Stadium, got smacked in the forehead, the day I almost drowned. She went to the doctor it left such a lump.

"The vortex effect"~Thinking back to avoid the future, getting sideswiped by going back. "The potential for triggering this vortex effect could be controlled only by avoiding any venue" associated with the loved one. "This would require ingenuity".  
Joan Didion, THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING p. 107, 113