A Grief Observed by C.S Lewis

I was sitting on my couch alongside my fiancé, scrolling lazily through Instagram. I peered over my phone to see him reading a book I had recommended to him long ago by Graham Greene. I remembered how much I enjoyed it and I immediately felt the urge to find a new book to read. I picked a book on his shelf, A Grief Observed, by C.S Lewis.

My fiancé had recommended this book to me at the start of our friendship, almost two years ago. We met in rather unusual circumstances, ten days after my mother’s sudden passing in a car accident. We met at the start of my journey through grief and he has silently but bravely accompanied me through it. 

In hindsight, the recommendation to read an intensely personal observation of Lewis’ grief might’ve been “too soon” as I only just began to process my mother’s passing. I knew C. S. Lewis’ work well and I appreciated his ability to verbalize even the deepest mysteries of Christianity and human experience. Hesitantly, I went ahead and dove right into it.

A Grief Recalled

For those who are unfamiliar with C. S. Lewis’ work or life, I believe picking up any book by him may usefully fill up this time of Quarantine. After reading the book, know this: it is not a “light read,” but it is profound. From the moment I began to read the first line I was transported to the first month after my mother’s death. To quote,  

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”  

C.S Lewis

Lewis begins by painting the physical experience of grief. The nausea, the restlessness, the fog that comes with the weight of an intimate loss. Though every person’s journey through grief is different, the experiences are all familiar to one another.  

C. S. Lewis lost his wife of only a few years, Joy, to the same illness his parents died from – cancer. I lost my mother and uncle within four years of one another to sudden and horrific car accidents.

C. S. Lewis and I are quite different; yet our experience of grief is similar. His mourning of Joy and my mourning of my mother differ in everything except intensity.

A Grief Observed: The Absurd Rebellion 

I could never find the words to describe the ache, chaos, and numbness felt all at once yet differently in each passing minute. Lewis, a genius in his own right, did so effortlessly in a matter of only a few pages.  

Interestingly, he believed these writings were a “defence against total collapse” while admitting he misunderstood grief, saying: 

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”  

C.S Lewis

I’ve read many articles describing grief from a subjective standpoint. Initially, it would often leave me with a sour taste in my mouth and I would begin to resent the author! Each line had an undertone of hope to “remedy” and “console.” 

As Lewis describes throughout the first two chapters, there is a selfish cry from the deepest caves of our wounds that not even religion can console. To quote, 

“But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

C.S Lewis

I say this honestly as a devout Catholic woman: there is a rebelliousness that accompanies despair. 

It’s almost as though you wish to doubt your belief in God as Love to hold someone accountable for the tragedy bestowed upon you. As though minimizing the God of Love and seeing Him as God the “Sadist” as Lewis describes, will offend Him. Because if God is truly all powerful and all good, in our pain He is the only one responsible. And in offending Him, maybe then He’d listen, maybe then He’d do something.

Lewis explains that in this absurd rebellion, we want “God to punish God.” As if Christ didn’t already bear the punishment of all human sin on Himself, and He Himself died on a cross just as unjustly as our loved ones were taken away.

And here is where iron sharpens iron. For before this great loss we think we have Faith. But we find that, as Lewis puts it:

“Only real risk tests the reality of belief.”

C.S Lewis

Unveiling a New Kind of Connection

In the weeks following the first few chapters came relief for Lewis. He describes it as a sense of closeness to his wife. Not as an apparition, but as a filling presence that follows him everywhere.  

He believes this closeness is due to him knocking on the door to the afterlife, rather than trying to bash it down. In this calmness comes a closeness; this very much resonated with me.

He beautifully concludes that his wife Joy, and all the dead, are like God. Loved not with obsessions of memory or photographs but loved as one loves God. To not love the idea of her or God. We are not called to love the idea of God, but God Himself. This reality, Faith, transforms our natural capacities for love.

Lewis knows this is a difficult task for any person, regardless of grief. I think especially now, during this time of virtual masses, meetings, gatherings, and work, it is especially difficult to connect and unite with people themselves rather than the idea of these persons. 

“We often make this same mistake as regards people who are still alive — who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture… we’ve made of him in our own minds?”

C.S Lewis

For the majority of us keeping quarantining regulations, we’re restricted to human interaction. Though it may seem easy to live behind a screen for a week, as time goes on, we become quite isolated, starved for organic human interaction.  

I see so many jokes online about being excited to go to a restaurant again, even if the service is awful. To wait in a crowded line for checkout or commute in traffic. Suddenly, now that these mundane and intolerable tasks of daily life are gone, we want them back. I wonder how long this feeling will last. Perhaps not too long but remember that feeling.

If you take anything away from my reflection on A Grief Observed, I would hope to encourage you to be unafraid of the uncomfortable phases of life and what they bring. Whether mundane, chaotic, sorrowful, uncertain, joyful or passionate, know that they make up the greater journey of life. 

Your moment, your life is unique. Let that be a source of comfort, not fear. Our life is but a moment. Changes will come and they should. We should do our best to cherish what we have before us for the sake of the goodness which we’re called to enjoy on earth for Heaven. 

And if you have lost someone recently to the virus or any other cause, our prayers are with you. Indeed, they continue to live on, whether you feel them or not, even when you feel nothing. 

Have joy in the Resurrection, He is Risen! 

“Earth has no sorrow that Heaven can’t heal.”

Isaiah 35:10