“Blue Nights” Addresses Loss During the Twilight of a Life
Writing of her confusion at the beginning of motherhood, she explains how concerned she was about the wardrobe for her and the baby for a trip to war-torn Saigon, shortly after Didion and her husband adopted Quintana in 1966. She describes Quintana’s christening as “the dress-up christening,” since Dunne had already christened the baby himself months prior, fearing something would happen before the scheduled ceremony. In fact, many of Didion’s actions that she recounts seem to have been for show. It is no secret that Quintana had a privileged upbringing. Didion’s memories of her family include lavish vacations, up-scale restaurants with movie stars, and swanky parties. But though she was fortunate in her upbringing, her life was anything but that with its constant terrors ignited by her BPD and acute pancreatitis that would ultimately lead to her death.
“’Privilege’ is an accusation. ‘Privilege’ remains an area to which—when I think of what she endured, when I consider what came later—I will not easily cop,” Didion notes of her daughter’s struggles with her emotional hindrances, her illness, and eventual death.
Having always been known for her dark, sometimes morbid topics, this tragic personal reflection of far-reaching proportions should come as no surprise for fans of the political journalist. From her in-depth, personal reporting on social injustices to her piece on the case of Terry Schiavo for the New York Review of Books (a case involving a 41-year-old woman whose right to live or die became a national debate rather than a familial one after she was declared to be in a vegetative state), Didion’s literary journalism has always rendered her a prolific figure in bringing to light the chaos of the world. This style has only transgressed to her additional literary works. In her fictional 1970 novel Play It As It Lays, the character Maria Wyeth suffers a mental breakdown after assisting her friend’s suicide. Her collection of essays, A Book of Common Prayer, focuses on political corruption and turmoil in the fictional country of Boca Grande. Depressing topics are nothing new for Didion; however, the personal nature of this memoir adds a new dimension of sadness.
Didion mourns not only the loss of her daughter, but she writes extensively about the loss of many of her close friends. An entire chapter is dedicated to the untimely death of Tony-award winning actress and wife of Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, notably known for her role in the beloved family favorite remake of The Parent Trap. The Didion-Dunne family was close to the Redgrave-Richardson family, and enjoyed spending time in each other’s company (coincidentally Richardson was married to her first husband, Robert Fox, in the living room of Didion’s apartment). But Richardson, like Quintana, died young at the mere age of 45 after an unfortunate skiing accident leaving her good friend behind. The book focuses on Didion’s experience of facing, and overcoming, her anxiety of having to grow old on her own.
Mourning is a messy experience. And Didion points this out in her novel, implying that it is a fairly contemporary phenomenon where those in grief are encouraged to put on a happy face shortly after the funeral, and move on with their lives. Didion disagrees with this, wishing for the black dresses and mourning practices of the past when families were expected, and permitted, to grieve loved ones for months, even years. Drawing on the fears we all have—fear of loss, fear of change, and fear of moving on– she allows herself sadness, and she allows readers into her world of haunting memories and what-ifs.
Though Didion’s memoir does not as successfully introduce readers to her daughter and her struggles as it familiarizes them with the torture of grief, it pinpoints at human inadequacies. She does not offer solace at the end of the book, and it is obvious that it is difficult for her to find comfort for herself. “The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her,” she writes toward the end. Didion admits to those who enter her world via the snowy white pages that she will always mourn her daughter for she walks with her through her daily tasks, but in this revelation a new fear builds inside her; a fear of what else she may lose during the “blue nights” of her life as she is sure the withering of summer’s twilight has only just begun.
