He wasn’t looking for a profound and passionate love, but he found it all the same. Lewis was an Oxford don, a Christian apologist, and the creator of the minimalist epic, The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis’s grief was the death of his wife.Ĭlive Staples Lewis was nearing the age of 60 when he married Helen Joy Gresham (nee Davidham, and referred to in A Grief Observed as “H”), an American divorcee who had come to England, leaving behind an abusive husband. He was a great friend, an incredible brother, and a transcendent uncle. He played college rugby and climbed mountains and ran 50k trail runs. He was smart – a college graduate working on his PhD. My grief: On June 22, 2015, my brother-in-law Paul drowned. It’s the thing you reach for when you are casting about in the dark, looking for something, anything, that might help. It’s not the thing you reach for in times of sunshine and cloudless days and a future of beautiful forevers. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, you’re probably doing it for a specific reason. To begin with, let me offer you my condolences. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become 'among the great devotional books of our age.' Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. 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.' 'I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get.

'We are under the harrow and can't escape,' he writes.

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. 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.' Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged.

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. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C.

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