I was going to try and comment a little on C.S. Lewis's "A Grief Observed" but it is too much of a masterpiece for me to have much confidence in doing it justice. Nonetheless, I will try.
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear" is the first line in the book, and is rather telling of the gravity of Lewis's grief. I myself have only really encountered grief once in my life and while it wasn't a relative so nearly close as one's better half, it took me a good time to get over it. Though it could be argued that one is never completely over grief. There are certain things that might still set me off from time to time but for the most part they are simple memories. A book, per say, of his when encountered might cause me to have a strange sensation. It is something that while like fear is simply not fear. "The same fluttering of the stomach, the same restlessness, the same yawning" as Lewis puts it. I hold the memory in my mind as a glass ball and while it passes with a butterfly's shadow, the emotions linger sticky-sweet. I almost choke on the memory, but I know in time it will pass... but how much time? I try to seek comfort in that while I am still trying to stay on the straight and narrow path, I must hold the belief that he is with God. "In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable." I cannot imagine the status of my relative, how does one "live" as a spirit? Does he await the resurrection of the dead or is time so meaningless where he is that it is as though we are already all there and Christ has come home? I don't know but then another thought bubble arises ".. was a splendid thing; a soul straight, bright, and tempered like a sword. But not a perfected saint. ... I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made even brighter."
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