Sad and sadder

My reading this week was about as sad as it could be.  A few years after her husband's death, Joan Didion's adult daughter, Quintana, also died.  The book was apparently written during that first year when grief is overwhelming.  When memories take over and can console, there can be a sense of regaining at least something that was lost.  But every memory recalled here is turned and examined and seems to always end up as a new vehicle of torture for the distraught mother.  The memoir is full of guilt and remorse, where none seems indicated as Quintana was quite ill and on a ventilator.  I'll only say that I'm glad I read the book - the writing is poetic and deeply moving and my hope is that, at some point, the mother will be comforted.