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A review by taratuulikki
A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
For the genre that it is, this is 4.5 stars in that it thoroughly recounts each step of the beginning stages of grief and recognition of loss.
This is an exceptionally detailed and artful exploration of grief and loss and identity particularly as a widow. I found myself endeared to the neurotic and honest and vulnerable Oats. Her impeccable storytelling also frightened and sickened and overwhelmed me, yet it also intrigued and amused me. The absurdity of a widow’s life. In contrast to Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, this book not only intellectually describes the grieving process but also immerses us in the emotional experience of it without resorting to vague generalities or becoming too saccharine. The more particular her experience, the more universal it becomes. Her particular loss becomes my loss even tho I have not yet lost a husband. I imagine this book being extremely relatable to widows on a deep, bodily level. It describes what I have observed.
Some of my favorite passages:
** “I am trying to carry too many things. So frequently lately I’ve been dropping things, surely I will drop something now. I am in dread of calling attention to myself. I am in dread of losing control in a public place. Suddenly it seems to me—I’ve left my handbag behind—I can’t quite see what I am carrying, in my arms. A wave of panic sweeps over me—though how trivial is this!—how ridiculous—at the possibility of losing my handbag, my car key, house key.
This is the terror: I will lose crucial keys. I will be stranded, marooned. I see myself at the side of a highway—in the dark—frantically signaling for—what?—headlights rush past, blinding. Or maybe this is a dream. Recurring dreams of being lost from my husband are my most frightening dreams but this too is very frightening, for it is so very plausible. Ray is likely to be in charge of keys—to know where a spare key might be kept, outdoors—but now I am obsessed with keys, searching through my handbag for keys a dozen times daily. The relief of finding a key, which might have been lost!
*** “I tell one of the nurses that my husband is in room 539, and he has died, and what do I do now? It is the height of naivete, or absurdity, to imagine that the nurses are not well aware of the fact that a patient has just died in Telemetry, a few yards away; yet, I am trying to be helpful, I am even asking with a faint smile, “Do I—call a funeral home? Can you recommend a funeral home?”
... This is so shocking to me—so stunning it’s as if the woman has reached over the counter and slapped my face.
It! So quickly Raymond has ceased being he, now is it.”
*** “Hurriedly I’d dressed and left the house, I am not even sure what shoes these are—my vision is blurred—could be, I am wearing two left shoes—or have switched right and left shoes—recall that, in the history of civilization, the designation right and left shoe is relatively recent, not so very long ago individuals counted themselves fortunate to wear just shoes—this is the sort of random, pointless and yet intriguing information Ray would tell me, or read out to me from a magazine—Did you know this? Not so very long ago . . .
The impulse comes over me, to rush into the other room, to tell whoever it is, or was—a woman—a stranger to me, as to Ray—about shoes, the history of right and left—except I understand that this is not the time; and that Ray, in any case, for whose benefit I might have mentioned it, will not hear.”
This is an exceptionally detailed and artful exploration of grief and loss and identity particularly as a widow. I found myself endeared to the neurotic and honest and vulnerable Oats. Her impeccable storytelling also frightened and sickened and overwhelmed me, yet it also intrigued and amused me. The absurdity of a widow’s life. In contrast to Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, this book not only intellectually describes the grieving process but also immerses us in the emotional experience of it without resorting to vague generalities or becoming too saccharine. The more particular her experience, the more universal it becomes. Her particular loss becomes my loss even tho I have not yet lost a husband. I imagine this book being extremely relatable to widows on a deep, bodily level. It describes what I have observed.
Some of my favorite passages:
** “I am trying to carry too many things. So frequently lately I’ve been dropping things, surely I will drop something now. I am in dread of calling attention to myself. I am in dread of losing control in a public place. Suddenly it seems to me—I’ve left my handbag behind—I can’t quite see what I am carrying, in my arms. A wave of panic sweeps over me—though how trivial is this!—how ridiculous—at the possibility of losing my handbag, my car key, house key.
This is the terror: I will lose crucial keys. I will be stranded, marooned. I see myself at the side of a highway—in the dark—frantically signaling for—what?—headlights rush past, blinding. Or maybe this is a dream. Recurring dreams of being lost from my husband are my most frightening dreams but this too is very frightening, for it is so very plausible. Ray is likely to be in charge of keys—to know where a spare key might be kept, outdoors—but now I am obsessed with keys, searching through my handbag for keys a dozen times daily. The relief of finding a key, which might have been lost!
*** “I tell one of the nurses that my husband is in room 539, and he has died, and what do I do now? It is the height of naivete, or absurdity, to imagine that the nurses are not well aware of the fact that a patient has just died in Telemetry, a few yards away; yet, I am trying to be helpful, I am even asking with a faint smile, “Do I—call a funeral home? Can you recommend a funeral home?”
... This is so shocking to me—so stunning it’s as if the woman has reached over the counter and slapped my face.
It! So quickly Raymond has ceased being he, now is it.”
*** “Hurriedly I’d dressed and left the house, I am not even sure what shoes these are—my vision is blurred—could be, I am wearing two left shoes—or have switched right and left shoes—recall that, in the history of civilization, the designation right and left shoe is relatively recent, not so very long ago individuals counted themselves fortunate to wear just shoes—this is the sort of random, pointless and yet intriguing information Ray would tell me, or read out to me from a magazine—Did you know this? Not so very long ago . . .
The impulse comes over me, to rush into the other room, to tell whoever it is, or was—a woman—a stranger to me, as to Ray—about shoes, the history of right and left—except I understand that this is not the time; and that Ray, in any case, for whose benefit I might have mentioned it, will not hear.”