As a kid, my father never took me with him on his trips back home to El Salvador. He told me there were beaches with black sand there and he brought back wooden tops my grandmother had picked out for me. I had never met her, but my dad said there were pictures of me hanging all over her tiny house. He also said sometimes he was stopped in the streets by men with guns.

The war’s been over for years, and I keep telling my dad I want to go back with him the next time he goes. But it hasn’t happened yet. Last year, I picked up Joan Didion’s Salvador from the library because I wanted to know more. I got busy and never finished the book before it was due.

But Didion’s article from yesterday’s New York Times Magazine made it clear that I need to check that book out again. The article’s an excerpt from her new book, The Year of Magical Thinking, and it details the aftermath of the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne. The details are sometimes mundane and still riveting, the memories of the moments just after his death patchwork and mostly forgotten. Just read it before it’s not available on the Times site anymore. You don’t want to have to sign up for Times Select do you?

Also, all you fellow freelancers, check out Land of the Free from last week’s On the Media for some funny and depressing details on Ben Yagoda’s Slate article about quitting freelancing.