Chapters 19, 20 and 21 Summary and Analysis

The author begins by commenting that she has trouble thinking of herself as a widow, adds that she had initially had difficulty thinking of herself as a wife and mother, and concludes by saying she spent the first years of wife/motherhood putting on external manifestations of what she believed to be her status. She also discusses how she has tended to live her life by improvisation more than by planning, adding that somehow it always worked out. "Why," she writes, "did [she] think that this improvisation could never end? If [she] had seen that it could, what would [she] have done differently? What would he?"

This chapter begins with the author's statement that she's writing it as the one year anniversary of John's death approaches. She describes how difficult it is for her to concentrate in social occasions...