A Grief Observed

Title: A Grief Observed

Author: C.S. Lewis

Source: Own

My Review:

Well, I do not understand why this book is always recommended when someone is dealing with grief. As Madeleine L'Engle states in the foreword: Reading A Grief Observed during my own grief made me understand that each experience of grief is unique.

I think we all know that. How I handle my grief from the loss of a loved one is different from how my siblings, husband, or children would handle their grief. There are going to be common characteristics, but overall, with different personalities, it just makes sense that grief will be different for each person.

Lewis's experience is based on the loss of his wife. They were married for three years, and he knew when he married her that she was dying from cancer. This book is eloquent and, for me, difficult to follow in part. I guess that is the point of grief as well; it makes it hard to communicate and understand properly. 

My experience with this book is different from other people's. So many people have found this book to be helpful, and I am not saying that it's not, just that it didn't resonate with me as much as others. I am having a difficult time describing it. So, instead, I will leave you with the quotes that did resonate with me:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid."

"I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting."

"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job-where the machine seems to run on much as usual-I loathe the slightest effort."

"There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape."

★★★/5

Synopsis (Goodreads):   

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."