In a 24/7 news world, we ricochet from one tragic story to the next. Children gunned down. Beautiful days ripped by deadly explosions. Communities ravaged by nature’s deadly force. Reason eludes us. We are reduced to the reality of our mortality and the power of chance over choice. Disasters render us speechless.
In hard times, many seek solace in scripture. Beyond holy texts, great authors also help us navigate the depths of our despair. Geoffrey Chaucer, Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje and Jennifer Lash are just some of the novelists whose books effectively capture the human experience of grief. Their characters, milieux and story lines may not match our particular experiences but they mirror the ways we grieve, tapping into our human strengths and frailties.
Great non-fiction literature also gives voice to unspeakable pain. One such work is A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (originally published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk in 1961, following the death of his wife). Lewis, a noted theologian as well as a celebrated author, candidly reflects on his grief as he moves through its stages. Many consider A Grief Observed the best book about coming to terms with grief. Questions of faith along with the daily challenges he faced living without the love of his life find eloquence at the master’s pen.
Examples include: “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” and “Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.”
Lewis did not intend his book to represent everyone’s experience. In chronicling his own, however, his gift with language, wedded to his philosophic and spiritual views, gives us words to help process and express our own grief.