Skip over navigation  The Year of Magical Thinking  Joan Didion
Chapters 13 and 14  Chapter 12  Chapters 15 and 16   In the
period following John’s death, Didion says, she had stopped
dreaming. She begins again in the summer of 2004 and recounts a
few dreams that she remembers. In one, she becomes separated
from John in an airport and he takes off on a flight to Hawaii
without her. Alone in the apartment she shared with John, Didion
clings to objects that remind her of him. For example, she
exclusively uses a set of china purchased by John’s mother for
his first New York apartment. Because the two of them spent
almost every day of their marriage together, Didion doesn’t have
any letters from him, only souvenirs of their many trips. Didion
remembers one New Year’s Eve the whole family spent in Honolulu,
where she and John were working on a film project. Watching the
fireworks from the hotel balcony as John slept in the next room,
Didion felt a profound sense of contentment. A few weeks before
he died, John re