A Grief Observed (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis)

"You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears" (45). I think this statement from C.S. Lewis summarizes his thoughts on grief. I appreciated his raw honesty, heartache, and questions as a great man of faith who is indeed very human. It was only when "I mourned H. [his wife] least, [that] I remembered her best" (44) and "the...more

"You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears" (45). I think this statement from C.S. Lewis summarizes his thoughts on grief. I appreciated his raw honesty, heartache, and questions as a great man of faith who is indeed very human. It was only when "I mourned H. [his wife] least, [that] I remembered her best" (44) and "the less I mourn her the nearer I seem to her" (56). I remember first hearing about C.S. Lewis' life and the death of his wife while I was standing in a book store nearly ten years ago. Though I do not remember who was telling me about C.S. Lewis, I do remember that person describing him as someone who had to lose his wife to deepen his faith. That always stayed with me as one of my only knowledgeable details of his life... and I remember both being shocked and humbled by it. So as I read A Grief Observed, I realized that this was that story of C.S. Lewis, and I read more indepth about this aspect of his life and faith. Throughout Lewis' journal, he uses beautiful figurative language to describe the death of one's mate: it is like a valley, it is like an amputation, a map of sorrow. One of the most profound descriptions is when he says: "We were one flesh. Now that it has been cut in two, we don't want to pretend that it is whole and complete." We will be still married, still in love. Therefore we shall still ache" (54). Oh, what a beautiful blessing of marriage... and the truth indeed that we enter into the covenant knowing that more than likely, someone is going to grieve the other. And I can relate to Lewis' realization that his order went him, his wife, and then God. "In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not to have been" (62). That was truth to me! "Praise in true order; of Him as the giver, of her as the gift" (62)... what great perspective and shift! I liked what his stepson said in the foreward, that "it almost seems cruel that her death was delayed long enough for him to grow to love her so completely that she filled his world as the greatest gift that God had ever given him, and then she died and left him alone in a place that her presence in his life had created for him" (xxx). His story will forever remind me of the quote: is it better to have loved and lost, or never to have loved at all? I think his journal answers that question both beautifully and painfully. So I take refuge in his words and his situation, one that I can not relate to, but know is inevitable in love and life. I too think "it is all right to wallow in one's journal... what we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends" (xiv). I thank him for writing, for sharing, and for loving.   hide