Wednesday, May 12, 2010

From "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis

I have read through this book twice in about a week. It is very short, just a collection of essays about his feelings after losing his wife. I seem to be writing a lot a lately but not necessarily things I want to "publish" in this format. So here you go...

Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this morning early. For
various reasons, not in themselves at all mysterious, my heart was lighter than
it had been for many weeks. For one thing, I suppose I am recovering physically
from a good deal of mere exhaustion. And I'd had a very tiring but very healthy
twelve hours the day before, and a sounder night's sleep; and after ten days of
low-hung grey skies and motionless warm dampness, the sun was shining and there
was a light breeze. And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H.
least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than
memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting
would be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one to use those
words. It was as if the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier.

Why has no one told me these things? How easily I might have misjudged another man in the same situation. I might have said, ‘He's got over it. He's forgotten his wife', when
the truth was, ‘He remembers her better because he has partly got over it.'

...Looking back, I see that only a very little time ago I was greatly concerned
about my memory of H. and how false it might become. For some reason - the
merciful good sense of God is the only one I can think of - I have stopped
bothering about that. And the remarkable thing is that since I stopped bothering
about it, she seems to meet me everywhere. Meet is far too strong a word. I
don't mean anything remotely like an apparition or a voice. I don't mean even
any strikingly emotional experience at any particular moment. Rather, a sort of
unobtrusive but massive sense that she is, just as much as ever, a fact to be
taken into account.
~C. S. Lewis

3 comments:

MandyMy said...

I love this! I'm definitely going to have to read this book. I have been through all of these feelings. Thanks for posting!! :)

Stacey said...

You should read it, its such a quick read! I think I got it on Amazon for about $3. Worth it :)

jenny said...

for some reason this made tears run down my face at work.

a little embarrassing.

i think c.s. lewis is a complete genius in so many ways.