A Grief Observed

by C.S. Lewis

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

“Don’t talk to me about the consolations of religion,” Lewis writes, “or I shall suspect that you do not understand.”

No easy or sentimental comforts are offered, but the ultimate purpose of God’s love for all of us human creatures is love.

I had yet to learn that all human relationships end in pain—it is the price that our imperfection has allowed Satan to exact from us for the privilege of love.

Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape. As I’ve already noted, not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench. But it isn’t. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.