Quote of the Day

Dolphins, I learned from J. William Worden of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate.  Geese had been observed reacting to such a death by flying and calling, searching until they themselves became disoriented and lost.  Human beings, I read but did not need to learn, showed similar patterns of response.  They searched.  They stopped eating.  They forgot to breathe.  They grew faint from lowered oxygen, they clogged their sinuses with unshed tears and ended up in otolaryngologists' offices with obscure ear infections.  They lost concentration.  "After a year I could read headlines," I was told by a friend whose husband had died three years before.  They lost cognitive ability on all scales.

-- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, p. 46-47