Grief

I also have become much acquainted with grief now through the death of my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the comforter of all our little set, the most angelic man. The odd thing is that his death has made my faith stronger than it was a week ago. And I find that all that talk about “feeling that he is closer to us than before” isn’t just talk. It’s just what it does feel like—I can’t put it into words. One seems at moments to be living in a new world. Lots, lots of pain, but not a particle of depression or resentment.

- Letters of C. S. Lewis
I have just got your letters of the 22nd containing the sad news of your father’s death. But, dear lady, I hope you and your mother are not really trying to pretend it didn’t happen. It does happen, happens to all of us, and I have no patience with the high-minded people who make out that it “doesn’t matter.” It matters a great deal, and very solemnly.

- Letters of C. S. Lewis
Grief in childhood is complicated with many other miseries. I was taken into the bedroom where my mother lay dead; as they said, “to see her,” in reality, as I at once knew, “to see it.” There was nothing that a grown-up would call disfigurement—except for that total disfigurement which is death itself. Grief was overwhelmed in terror. To this day I do not know what they mean when they call dead bodies beautiful. The ugliest man alive is an angel of beauty compared with the loveliest of the dead.

- Surprised by Joy