BOOK REVIEW - A Grief Observed by C.S.Lewis

A Grief Observed by C.S.Lewis (First published 1961)

In the 1994 introduction to this book written in 1960 and originally published under a pseudonym, Douglas H Gresham, the step-son of C.S.Lewis, issues a note of caution. He explains that this is a description of the grief experienced by C.S.Lewis following the death of his wife. The title “A” Grief is therefore important - this is a personal account - not an attempt to define - or explain - grief universally. Despite this, I recognised much of what Lewis describes, either from my own (limited) experience of bereavement, or from what other people have told me about theirs.

 The many faces of grief

Early in the book, Lewis suggests that grief is like fear - an invisible blanket separating him from the rest of the world. He describes the difficulties he encounters when interacting with other people - wanting to be around them but not necessarily wanting to engage - and of feeling a sense of embarrassment when trying to do so - both on his part and on the part of others. What do you say to those who are grieving? “Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers?” he asks.

It is not surprising that such an erudite writer would critique the language of grief - as heard in the words of hymns or sympathy cards or the things people write or say. How can anyone know “They are at peace now.” Why are they “in Gods hands now” - haven’t all of us always been in God’s hands, he asks?

Lewis describes moments of frequent guilt and shame - shame at those times he felt he was wallowing in grief but also the times when he felt he was getting over it. Guilt at thinking more about himself and his own pain than the pain his late wife endured - and the guilt of getting on with life and work and not thinking about her (or his grief) at all.

Many people have told me it is the ‘ordinary moments’ of daily life they find most difficult in grief - sitting at the breakfast table expecting someone to pass the jam or ask for the newspaper. Lewis explains how he felt the absence of his wife most strongly in moments of “least sorrow” such as getting out of the bath. A one-legged man, he explains, can’t ever get over the loss of his leg. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, all will be different.

Others have told me how they felt grief has come to them in uncontrollable waves; just as they think they are getting over it, it hits them again. Lewis explains he felt as though he was in a spiral - but not certain if the trajectory was up or down. “Round and round, everything repeats. Am I going in circles?” he writes.

Bereavement as the next stage of marriage, to be lived as faithfully

Lewis was only married to his wife, Joy Davidman (referred to in the book as ‘H’ after her first name, Helen), for a short time - but had known her for much longer. He ascribes particular significance to their relationship as a married couple, reflecting on the way this transformed both of them - two people who were many different things to each other becoming (almost) one. Lewis explains that through marriage, a man and a woman may grow to a point at which a wife may be described as much as a brother as a sister; where talk of the masculine and feminine in either party is arrogant;

“Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. In the image of God He created them. Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.”

However the reality of this one-ness is limited - you can’t share the other’s fear or pain or weakness no matter how close your bond. You can learn to compensate for it but you can never share it;

“This cold truth.....is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.”

Lewis suggests that grief is an integral part of our experience of love, writing;

“Bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases, like the honeymoon. We want to live that phase as faithfully.”

It is often said that we only truly appreciate what we have when it is gone. After struggling with the issue of memory and its failings, Lewis writes that just as marriage leads each person out of themselves to something greater, in death the same may also be the case - through grief we come to love the real person:

“To love the very love of Her, and not falling back to loving our past, our memory, or our sorrow, or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.”

Where is God?

The book was republished in the name of the author posthumously. It is said that many of Lewis’s strongest supporters could not accept that the foremost Christian apologist in the country might openly question his faith and belief. Some speculated that the book was a work of fiction - but there is no doubt that Lewis wrote the text.

During the course of the book, through candid observations and frank self-doubt, Lewis moves from a sense of the absence of God, questioning His motives, to embracing the generous love of God - an inexplicable generous love which comes closer to being explicable through understanding the love that he experienced in marriage.

Grief is like a wind which blows against the reality of his faith - a self-described “House of Cards” - to determine its substance; mere imagination or something more substantial? Our beliefs are only really tested, Lewis remarks, when there is something staked on them - such as in matters of life and death.

Lewis speculates that the absence of God that he felt soon after the death of his wife - what he describes as the closed door - may have been a direct result of his intense longing for the door to be open - wanting God to make His presence felt, to give comfort and guidance. But rather than knocking at the door, Lewis wonders if he was actually banging and kicking at it hysterically;

“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t get what you want if you want it too desperately. ‘I must get a good nights sleep’ ushers in hours of wakefulness.”

“The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs.”

Lewis addresses issues of pain and suffering and questions God’s purpose and motivation at these moments, using images some may recognise from his other writings - of God as a vivisectionist or a dentist.

“What do people mean when they say ‘I am not afraid of God because I know he is good?’ Have they never been to a dentist?”

In the second chapter, writing late one evening after a particularly difficult day, he projects anger for his wife’s pain and discomfort - and the false hopes of failed treatments - towards God;

“What reason have we to believe that God is good? Doesn’t all the evidence suggest otherwise?”

The next day he realises how irrational these thoughts were. To suggest that God is a “Cosmic Sadist” is too anthropormorphic - to attempt to make God man - a man who is comprehensible, with human emotions. We must accept that pain is pain. Fear is fear. Suffering is suffering. God is God.

It is on the cross that Lewis finds this reality exposed. Where Christ “realised that the Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed.” In a fascinating passage, Lewis documents a prayerful conversation with Jesus. If Christ went to the cross for us, why could he not take the pain and suffering of his wife - substituting himself for her in death? Jesus replies: “You cannot and you dare not. I could and dared.”

The nature of reality - images as links to what is unknowable

After the familiar reality of his married life has been interrupted by the death of Joy, the question of what is real - and the extent to which we can perceive and are willing to accept reality - is a recurring theme.

At the start of the book Lewis is preoccupied with his memory of his late wife - or rather the fear of losing it. He equates this need for memory with “respect” for the dead.  He grows to be highly self-critical of this desire; concerned that, like a gentle snowstorm, his memory of Joy is slowly covering the truth of who she was and is. “Respect for the dead is a trap” he remarks.

Lewis has a particularly harsh opinion of those people who say “I’m just going to visit Mum” (meaning her grave). Such a mindset, he suggests, occurs when the snowflakes have obscured all essence of the dead. The grave becomes a puppet.

Images, memories, he concludes, have their use - but are only links to the past. In the Eucharist the wafer links us to Christ - it does not have the least resemblance to Him. “All reality is iconoclastic” he declares.

In the final chapter, Lewis describes an experience of “meeting” his wife - although cannot find an appropriate term to describe it. Not seeing an image or hearing here but an overpowering sense of her presence; her mind. It is at this point that he seems to stop worrying about whether he remembers her accurately.

In life it is the image, not the idea or essence of a loved one, which is most real to us. But it is their “independent reality” that we truly love - to love an image is incestuous. It is this independent reality which we must learn to find after their death. A reality which is not imaginable; in that sense all the dead are like God. Loving them has become like loving Him.

Lewis is adamant that his reflections - and the book - must come to an end. In the final chapter he remarks that his writing has been about himself, his wife and about God - “The order and proportions exactly what they ought not to have been.”

He questions whether he has documented his experiences as well as he had hoped - concerned that many of the changes in his attitude and understanding were not observable in themselves;

“There was no sudden, striking and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have been going on for some time.”

However if, as Lewis remarked, grief requires us to accept the cold reality of our separation from oneness with our loved ones and with God, I think this book helps us to open our arms and embrace that life of unknowing.