I’ve been reading excerpts from Joyce Carol Oates’s latest book, A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, in which she lays her soul bare in the aftermath of her husband’s unexpected death. Her writing is so good, sad and sweet. I look forward to reading the book in its entirety. If you’re confused by this, after all my complaining about my reluctance to read a book a month this year, don’t be. I can consume nonfiction like nobody’s business, especially when it comes to death stuff.

As I continue (and continue and continue) to probe my own grief over the deaths in my own history, I get comfort from other peoples’ mapping of their own grief landscapes. To wit, Oates’s observation:

Is this grief?—such exhaustion, melancholy? A feeling of dazed dizzy not-rightness, like the sensation you feel before acute nausea? A sensation of being off-balance—both spiritually and physically—as if something has worked its way loose inside my head?

Oh, yes, I know that feeling. I remember that off-kilter, hanging-off-the-side-of-a-cliff feeling.

I remember finding myself in the drug store, a day or two after my mother’s death, waiting to pay for whatever I was buying. I had a sudden rush of self-awareness — suddenly, I was afraid to look down, at myself, because I had no memory as to whether I had dressed or not before leaving the house. I seriously had no idea if I wearing pants at that moment.

I can laugh a little at this memory. Processing grief took my mind to absolute limit — but I live to tell!