A Grief Observed
by C. S. Lewis

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• ISBN13: 9780060652739
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of A Grief Observed

Book Review: A Grief Shared
Summary: 5 Stars

I have not lost a spouse or immediate family member, but not too long ago I went through a three-month period that seemed like some sort of hell on Earth to me where loss seemed to strike everywhere around me. I felt like it was circling me in a very predatory manner. One particular loss hit me with unexpected force (not to diminish any of the others), and perhaps for the very first time in my life I truly grieved for a person, and still do in a way (it never truly ends--we simply find a way of picking up the pieces and putting them into a new pattern). Reading A Grief Obserrved was a tremendous help to me because it helped me not to be ashamed or isolated in the feelings I had--once this is dispensed with, it becomes a bit easier to truly integrate the experience (I say this rather than "move past"...while you ought not "dwell in it" forever, you ought not bury it, either. Neither do any good).

Perhaps the bravest part of this journal, in my opinion, is where Lewis admits openly to his anger at God, his doubts. Especialy for someone such as him, this is most courageous. In my case it took a terrible nightmare to truly make me face the fact that I was *angry*. I was sad, I begged God to stop the unbroken chain of losses, but I was *angry* too, angry especially at the fact that every one of the dead was middle-aged, much as Lewis' wife was, and "should have" had much more time. I was terrified, felt my life had gone out of control, that my moods were uncontrollable, and that none of it was at all fair. I wanted peace and reconciliation so terribly much, but it wouldn't come. These are also much like things Lewis describes.

One statement of Lewis' hit me very hard and, I think, explained to me why peace wouldn't come. Lewis and I both cried out at one point that we felt we'd found, at the time we needed Him the most, "a door slammed in [our faces]". But then, he realizes a thing that fits perfectly with my own experiences: "Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing 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 clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear." For me, true peace is usually heralded by a dream. When I cried to God for it, struggled to create it by force in myself, it wouldn't come. But then one morning as I lay there in a peaceful state, I gently slipped away into it without any effort to get there or, once I realized what it was, any struggle to hold myself in it. It simply *was*--perhaps because I finally just lay back and opened the door to what was there all along...there was never any abandonment by God.

This is not to say we should try to curtail the grieving process. We have to endure it--that's how we deal with things. But it can help, even if just a bit, to see your own experiences, even the darkest parts, mirrored in those of another. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has suffered or is suffering from grief. If you're getting it for someone else, please be aware that they will take it in only in their own time, no one else's--or they may ultimately have to find a different way for themselves. Please don't take that as a rejection of you and your gift, or a devaluation of this book. But for those who *do* choose this, I can say I believe it will be meaningful.

Summary of A Grief Observed

Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C. S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."

Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."

Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."

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