Lisa of Troy's Reviews > A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis, the famous author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote A Grief Observed after the death of his wife.

In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis is grappling with the death of his wife, asking questions of God and about God. He is struggling to understand how God could snatch away his wife and how God could allow her to suffer. Lewis is writing notebook after notebook trying to process his grief. He eventually published this book in the hopes that it would help someone.

For someone grieving, I would not recommend this book because in 1961, grief counseling wasn’t a thing. There have been two deaths in my life that deeply impacted me. The most recent death, I was waking up crying, cried all day long, and went to sleep crying. This went on for weeks until I started to meet with a grief counselor.

C.S. Lewis is writing in his manuscripts, and he talks about how he is afraid of forgetting his wife. As part of my grief counseling, I had the exact same fears. As time goes on, memories will fade. One of my assignments was to write down every memory that I had with the deceased. I had this notebook that had on its cover, “Every moment counts.” Inside, I filled the pages with memories. It helped me to take back control of my life because I knew that I could open that notebook at any time and go through my memories. Also, I remembered that the deceased had a full life, a happy life, filled with so much love and laughter. Before completing the exercise, I was solely focused on The End, where the deceased was suffering tremendously, extremely sick. Of course, I was going to feel sad when I remembered my loved one suffering so much, but I felt a lot better when I remembered that the deceased had a lot of happy times.

Lewis also spends most of the book lamenting the loss of his wife. The loss is a major loss, and he wants to ask God why He is so cruel. However, perhaps, Lewis should be thankful for the time that he had his wife. To find his wife, they both had to speak a common language. They also had to be existing in the same period of time, not born 200 years earlier or later. Plus, they had to meet. His wife was originally married to someone else, and she lived in the United States. Eventually, she was able to make it over to London. It would be almost impossible for that to happen today. What if his wife didn’t speak English, or was born 200 years earlier, or her original husband told her that she couldn’t take off to London? What if she was married to someone else? Maybe the four years that Lewis had with her was a gift.

Lewis is falling apart, but I would hope that he would honor his wife. He had a tremendous reach in literature. She could have been his muse, his inspiration. Her legacy could have lived on in him. The ones that we love can inspire and ignite us. Their love story could have echoed through the ages between the pages of his books; it never had to die. Perhaps she suffered so that he would have more compassion. Maybe he could change the conversation regarding the ill or donated money to cancer research.

When I watched The Fountain, there was a man who planted a tree upon the grave of his wife. He wanted to keep her alive through the tree. When my cat died, I spread his ashes underneath a cherry tree. Every year, right before the anniversary of his death, it blooms. This tree transformed death from something horrible to something beautiful.



2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities

Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta