A Grief Observed

Lewis discovers that when he is distracted from thinking about Helen, “though I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss” which is more painful than actively remembering her (35).

He decides to switch to a rational approach to managing his grief in an effort to escape from his overwhelming feelings. Lewis admits he always knew intellectually that suffering was inevitable, and “had warned myself [..] not to reckon on worldly happiness,” but discovers that pain and loss are much different in concrete, lived experience than in the abstract (36). Helen’s death forced him to confront the reality of suffering in the world, collapsing his “house of cards” (38).

Comparing his grief to his wife’s physical pain, Lewis criticizes his self-preoccupation: “what sort of lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers?” (41). Lewis wants Helen back “as an ingredient in the restoration of my past,”but realizes that may not be best for her: “having once got through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again?” (41). He wonders whether Helen is still suffering in the afterlife because before her death, Lewis did not imagine that people went straight to heaven, and while wonderful, she was not a “perfected saint” and thus, had “stains to be scoured” (41).