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| First Written | 1961 |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Origin | UK |
| My Copy | cheap paperback |
| First Read | June 05, 2014 |
A Grief Observed
Reread as part of my 're-read Lewis as an Adult' assignment.
This book must've made a serious impression on me, because all of it seemed familiar, like I'd just read it recently. I've been a little wary of it, because Lewis' experience of grief feels too familiar - not that I've been been through any real grief, but that I expect future grief to feel like the way Lewis describes it. It's like looking down the barrel of my own future, and I don't like it.
Noted on June 5, 2014
I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain that in all those vast time and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?
Quoted on June 5, 2014
Only a real risk tests the reality of belief.
Quoted on June 5, 2014
There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as 'feminine.' But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human.
Quoted on June 5, 2014
Still, there's no denying that in some sense I 'feel better,' and with that comes at once a sort of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one's unhappiness... What is behind it? Partly, no doubt, vanity. We want to prove to ourselves that we are lovers on the grand scale, tragic heroes; not just ordinary privates in the huge army of the bereaved, slogging along and making the best of a bad job.
Quoted on June 5, 2014