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A Widow’s Story: A Memoir
Joyce Carol Oates
“My husband died, my life collapsed.”On a February morning, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. In less than a week, Ray was dead and Joyce was faced – totally unprepared – with the reality of widowhood.In this beautiful and heart-breaking account, Joyce takes us through what it is to become a widow: the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor and the solace of friendship. Acutely perceptive and intensely moving, A Widow’s Story is at once a truly personal account and an extraordinary and universal story of life and death, love and grief.
A Widow’s Story
A MEMOIR
Joyce Carol Oates
In memory of my husband
Raymond Smith
Oh God—you are going to be so unhappy.
—Gail Godwin
I am very sorry to learn that Ray died a couple of weeks ago. When someone I loved died I found it helpful to remind myself that this person was not less real because she wasn’t real now, just as people in New Zealand aren’t less real because they aren’t real here.
—Derek Parfit
When my mother died I adopted the Gestalt technique of saying to myself, whenever there was a surge of grief, “I choose to have a mother who is dead.”
—T. D., a former colleague at the University of Windsor
One breath at a time, Joyce. One breath at a time.
—Gloria Vanderbilt
Contents
Cover (#uc30dc8fe-0400-50da-8097-af3b419e5ce3)
Title Page (#u0f135fe8-4885-52a1-8274-fa4447a5cce0)
Epigraph (#u27710498-54ce-59ef-991e-9864bacf98d3)
Part I: The Vigil
Chapter 1 - The Message
Chapter 2 - Car Wreck
Chapter 3 - The First Wrong Things
Chapter 4 - “Pneumonia”
Chapter 5 - Telemetry
Chapter 6 - E-mail Record
Chapter 7 - E. coli
Chapter 8 - Hospital Vigil(s)
Chapter 9 - Jasmine
Chapter 10 - Vigil
Chapter 11 - E-mail Record
Chapter 12 - Memory Pools
Chapter 13 - “I’m Not Crying for Any Reason”
Chapter 14 - The Call
Part II: Free Fall
Chapter 15 - “The Golden Vanity”
Chapter 16 - Yellow Pages
Chapter 17 - The Arrow
Chapter 18 - E-mail Record
Chapter 19 - Last Words
Chapter 20 - “You’ve Said Good-bye”
Chapter 21 - Double Plot
Chapter 22 - Cat Pee
Chapter 23 - Probate
Chapter 24 - “Sympathy Gift Basket”
Chapter 25 - The Betrayal
Chapter 26 - The Artisans
Chapter 27 - E-mail Record
Part III: The Basilisk
Chapter 28 - “Beady Dead Eyes Like Gems”
Chapter 29 - The Lost Husband
Chapter 30 - “How Are You?”
Chapter 31 - “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”
Chapter 32 - The Nest
Chapter 33 - Ghost Rooms
Chapter 34 - E-mail Record
Chapter 35 - Fury!
Chapter 36 - Oasis
Chapter 37 - Bruised Knees
Chapter 38 - A Dream of Such Happiness!
Chapter 39 - “We Want to See You Soon”
Chapter 40 - Moving Away
Chapter 41 - “Won’t Be Seeing You for a While”
Chapter 42 - “Can’t Find You Where Are You”
Chapter 43 - “I Am Sorry to Inform You”
Part IV: Purgatory, Hell
Chapter 44 - “Neither Joyce Nor I Can Come to the Phone Right Now”
Chapter 45 - The Military Order of the Purple Heart
Chapter 46 - In Motion!
Chapter 47 - In Motion!—“Still Alive”
Chapter 48 - In Motion! —“Mouth of the Rat”
Chapter 49 - In Motion!— “The Wonder Woman of American Literature”
Chapter 50 - In Motion!— “You Can’t Sit There”
Chapter 51 - “Never Forget”
Chapter 52 - The Widow’s Secret
Chapter 53 - Congratulations! I
Chapter 54 - Congratulations! II
Chapter 55 - E-mail Record
Chapter 56 - The Cache
Chapter 57 - Morbidity Studies
Chapter 58 - The Intruder
Part V: “You Looked So Happy”
Chapter 59 - Too Soon!
Chapter 60 - “Leaving Las Vegas”
Chapter 61 - “The Unlived . . .”
Chapter 62 - Cruel Crude Stupid “Well-Intentioned”
Chapter 63 - “If . . .”
Chapter 64 - “Never, Ever That Again”
Chapter 65 - The “Real World”
Chapter 66 - Little Love Story
Chapter 67 - Tulips
Chapter 68 - Please Forgive!
Chapter 69 - “Happy, and Excited”
Chapter 70 - Blood in the Water!
Chapter 71 - Walking Wounded
Chapter 72 - Dead Woman Walking
Chapter 73 - Taboo
Chapter 74 - “Ashamed to Be ‘White’ ”
Chapter 75 - It Made No Difference
Chapter 76 - Sinkholes
