“Unraveling Desires and Dread: A Deep Dive into Casey Mulligan Walsh’s ‘The Full Catastrophe'”
And though she tells us that “deep within I sense…how today will end” — in the kind of full catastrophe, both tragic and final, that’s everything she’s ever feared (per the book’s title) — she can’t help but hope, against all odds, for a miracle. I did too. Maybe a bedridden 103-year-old man who just recovered from four broken ribs can recover from a fractured hip and be mobile again. But when, after “quiet praying…everything is suddenly quiet,” Walsh is left — as she puts it — with “the sadness I always carry,” with the “weight of loneliness that never leaves,” and with a deep and lasting “melancholy” to which her firstborn was also prone. I, meanwhile, was left staring at a gaunt and grey, open-mouthed man who’d once been my grandpa as a horrible keening sound escaped from my own open mouth.
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