A Grief Observed
C.S. Lewis has that most interesting writing style. You know the one. You are reading and following along, but after a few minutes pass, you find yourself in a sea of letters of the alphabet, all random and mixed up. Few of said letters are forming words and none of those words seem the least bit relevant to what you thought you were reading. I had a friend once who could talk like that. Genius, they are both.
I can’t say that I gave this last book of his a great deal of my attention. I fit it in between bites of food and commercial breaks in a mild quest to deal with my own grief. Poor man though, here I am commenting on the thoughts and raw emotions that poured out of him and into a journal when his wife died of cancer. (I’m suddenly reminded of m2 and her quest for a book of individual journal pages.) Jack really never meant this book to be a book. I present to you its gems.
I learned the most from this excerpt:
“For, as I have discovered, passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them. This becomes clearer and clearer. It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow… that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right…I seem to remember – though I couldn’t quote one at the moment – all sorts of ballads and folk-tales in which the dead tell us that our mourning does them some kind of wrong. They beg us to stop it…
For me at any rate the programme is plain. I will turn to her as often as possible in gladness. I will even salute her with a laugh. The less I mourn her the nearer I seem to her.
An admirable programme. Unfortunately it can’t be carried out. Tonight all hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs…
How often – will it be for always? – how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment’?”
And was brought to tears by this one:
” ‘She is in God’s hand.’ That gains a new energy when I think of her as a sword. Perhaps the earthy life I shared with her was only part of the tempering. Now perhaps He grasps the hilt; weighs the new weapon; makes lightnings with it in the air. ‘A right Jerusalem blade.’ “
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One of my favorite books ever. I have read this time and again and always find something new and inspiring in its pages. raw and real
Tera! I’m so glad you commented on this older post. You helped me find the blockquote button I didn’t know existed over here at WordPress. Thank you!
so much joy on such a sad post…
i don’t know if i will ever read this one again. it was too much of a sad time in life. what brings you to re-read? you got the word right though. this book is very raw. after reading lewis’ other works that are so polished, this one is almost shocking for the gaping wound that it is.
Thank you for posting this. I read the book in 1998 when my grandfather died–his was the first truly close death I’d experienced, and Lewis’ heart laid open as if on an operating table almost felt like a tour guide through the bewildering process. The quote about passionate grief is one that has stayed with me ever since, but only in concept. I wanted to see the actual words again, but I’ve had trouble locating it in its entirety (I couldn’t find it in the book, as I gave my copy away!). Anyway, I really needed to see this today, so thank you again for letting it be found.