Written by CS Lewis, 1961
There have been few books on grief, loss, or widowhood in which I felt comfortable, compelled, or convinced to read all the way through. As I started A Grief Observed, I quickly found myself wanting to highlight every other sentence while I was still in the introduction, which was written by CS Lewis’ stepson. I knew I wanted to write about this book in some way but I didn’t feel as though a summary at the end would be adequate, when anyone could simply Google the summary or read the description on the back of the book themselves. So instead, I’ll go chapter by chapter and write quotes, reactions, reflections that capture the heart of this book. I don’t want to take away the joy of you reading it yourself, but rather wish to offer you some of these best bits in an effort to convince my bereaved friends that this is a book worth reading. It’s as if you’re sitting across a booth in a cozy English pub listening to a widower friend tell you his story as you commiserate and support one another.
A Grief Observed is a short two hour audiobook, though I highly recommend having a physical copy in hand, with a highlighter, perhaps a tissue, and a warm mug of coffee or tea.
Introduction
“The great love, and the great loss, which is its counter point. The soaring joy which is the finding and winning of the mate whom God has prepared for us, and the crushing blow: the loss, which is satan’s corruption of that great gift of loving and being loved.”
“This book is a man emotionally naked in his own Gethsemane. It tells of the agony and the emptiness of the grief such as few of us have to bear. The greater the love, the stronger the grief.”
“What many of us discover in this outpouring of anguish is that we know exactly what he (CS Lewis) is talking about. Those of us who have walked this same path or are walking it as we read this book, find that we are not, after all, as alone we thought.”
Chapter 1
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
This is such a perfect description of grief, one that only truly makes sense if you’ve been there. Perhaps you didn’t have the words to describe the feeling at the time, but you read Lewis’ words and think, “Yes! That!” I remember this feeling well.
“Not that I am, I think, in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”
He writes about His faith and His grief in such an honest way. Admittedly, and I don’t say this in a boastful way, in my grief I never felt as though God was distant from me or that He was hurting me on purpose. However I know it’s a common struggle, and having someone as strong in the faith as CS Lewis honestly describe this grappling between knowing Truth but feeling a distance or a disappointment is reassuring.
“An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t.
Some funk it altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well brought-up young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel them both thinking. ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.“
This made me chuckle as I read because this phenomenon is the reason behind the name of this blog. I get it though. When you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to know what to say. I haven’t lost a parent or a child, and I have no doubt I’ve responded in similar ways. And I will never forget when a member of our church lost her husband, seeing her at church, probably making the same face I grew to loathe. On the way home, I turned to Bubba and said “I can’t imagine coming back here (to our church) if you were gone.”
“At first I was very afraid of going to places where [Helen Joy] and I had been happy-our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash.”
As I mentioned above, I did some things very quickly. I was so worried if I waited too long to return to church that going back would feel more impossible. Other places took me longer to return to. I wrote a whole post on the nagging question of “When is the right time?”
Have you read this book yet? Leave a comment telling me what you thought of Chapter 1. Or, if you plan on reading it, let me know below!
The Neon W 
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