Why "another grief observed"?

To all who have been praying for me and my family, supporting me and my family, wondering about me and my family, I apologize for my radio silence up to now. In the beginning, I just needed the silence and the time to be absorbed in grief. Please know that I am very grateful for all that you all have done. My silence does not signify annoyance or ingratitude.

As many of you have mentioned, a new stage now begins. The funeral is over; most have gone home. All must continue to lead their normal lives. We (my family and I) try. But "normal" is not coming back for us. After the gracious hospitality of the Archibalds, we moved back to our home in Rockford to begin to figure out a new normal. And that brings a whole new stage of grief.

The kids seem to be doing fine. I am amazed at their resilience. They are so good.

But the return has been very hard for me. So many thoughts, so much sadness. And denial. I see it in me. This can't really be happening. At some point, my Heidi will walk through the door, and the nightmare will be over. I can't face the future without her.

There is so much work that must be done after a spouse dies. Every day, I have to chip at it a little more. But that does not mesh well with the denial. Every step taken is a forced admission to myself that Heidi has died. This is difficult.

I have come to the point where I felt like I needed to write—almost a compulsion. I have felt such compulsions in the past. But, for better or for worse, it's been a while. I suddenly recalled that (I was pretty sure) C.S. Lewis was in a similar situation—the occasion for his book A Grief Observed. I had not read it before. (Heidi had, of course). I began to think that I should probably go try to find if we had a copy...

But I did not need to. So far, I have only made it halfway through all the wonderful cards and gifts that people have given our family, before, during, and after the funeral. But included in the half I have gone through, I found a copy of Lewis's book (this edition). Unfortunately, due to my carelessness, it was mixed with other opened cards and Mass offerings. So I do not know who gave it to me. I am so sorry for my ignorance, whoever you are who gave me this book. But I also thank you so much.

Two days ago, as Margaret was sleeping on my shoulder (and I knew putting her down would only wake her up), I found myself unable to work or to write. And the thoughts were only cycling in denial. So I realized I needed to read. I read A Grief Observed in that one sitting, during Margaret's nap. (Yes, it's a slim volume, but for many reasons, this was a bit exceptional). There were many tears in the reading, even loud weeping. But there were good insights, too.

The book was very helpful. But for me, even more helpful was the Introduction, written by C.S. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham. I think one of its great strengths was its succinctness. In the short time allowed for an Introduction, Douglas captured better what I am going through right now. Lewis's book, on the other hand, is clearly a record of time and motion—sometimes with very rapid changes in acceleration, as it appeared to me. Thus, really only half of Lewis's book appealed to me as I am now, whereas the other half seems so... far off and a bit... fake? (Sorry, Lewis. I hope to get there some day, too... or do I? I don't know. I simply don't know what I want the future to be. Being happy means being happy without Heidi as my earthly wife. And much of me doesn't want that to happen. On the other hand, being sad is bittersweet, but too bitter to make it worth it. I don't know).

There were two points made by Douglas that helped me the most.

1. I did not realize before how alike Lewis and I were. I did not know that Lewis's own mother died when he was nine years old. I did not know that his marriage was also a deeply intellectual friendship (indeed, having read some of Lewis's other essays that touched on relationships between the sexes, I never would have guessed this about him, to be honest). I did not know that there were children involved (though they were stepchildren to Lewis himself). One part that particularly struck me was this passage (Douglas speaking):

I had the resilience of youth upon which to fall when Mother died; for me there would be other loves to find and no doubt in time to lose or be lost by. But for Jack [Lewis] this was the end of so much which life had for so long denied him and then briefly held out to him like a barren promise. For Jack there were none of the hopes (however dimly I might see them) of bright sunlit meadows and life-light and laughter.

This exactly expressed my thoughts now. The kids are amazing. But having been in their shoes, I know that they subconsciously know that they were always going to have a future of their own some day—a future that did not involve cohabitation with their mother. As far as concerns them, Heidi's young death has only foreshortened that. And in the meantime, their life is going back to normal, as best as I can make normal for them.

But for me, it's a different story. When I made my vows to Heidi, it was with the earthly hope of spending a long time with her. It was my last earthly hope. I am not an ambitious person. Any work I do is simply to support my family, where my joy on earth had most of its exercise. And Heidi and I were the first in that family. "Till death do us part" was supposed to be a long time in coming.

I know that I have my kids' futures to look forward to. But—I'm sorry to say—even that has its bitterness. The kids' sacraments and graduations, their eventual vocations, the kids' smiles and joys and laughter, even the laughter we are all experiencing these days, as family comes together in mutual support—all of these I wanted to share with Heidi. Several times these days, I have caught myself thinking, "Oh, wait till I tell Heidi what Nina said while she was gone," or something similar. And then, once I catch myself, I have to go be apart and cry. In all our times of laughter, there is one distinct laugh I am too aware of not hearing. And there is one broad smile—a smile we all know—that is not showing.

I know this is self-pity. But it is where I am now. I love Heidi, and I am confused as to what I am supposed to do with that love now.

2. Douglas was also keen to remind the reader that the title of Lewis's book was A Grief Observed. Every grief is unique.

The title completely and thoroughly describes what this book is, and thus expresses accurately its real value... This book... is a stark recounting of one man's studied attempts to come to grips with and in the end defeat the emotional paralysis of the most shattering grief of his life.

At first, I did not believe Douglas's insistence. I thought my own grief would be basically the same as Lewis's, partly because of number 1 above, and partly because even this small snippet that I just quoted felt so like my experience right now. I expected, as I read the book, to find that Lewis and I would be very similar.

But I went on to find that we are quite different. For one thing, even when Lewis says that nothing less than torture will "shake a man—or at least a man like me—out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs," Lewis is still so abstract in his writing. I don't know how he does it. Perhaps a part of his abstraction was to avoid being too personal (he wrote under a pen-name, and never used full names in the text). But I also think it's just how he always was.

I can't be so abstract right now. All of my theology and philosophy, all the things I have taught my students are of little help right now. (To be clear, I still think they are true, as best as I can understand truth; and, in my defense, I always told my students that the philosophical problem of evil is one thing, and being with the bereaved in their grief is quite another. That's what I mean: I am grieving, not philosophizing. And my emotions now are such that intellect is of little help).

And another difference between Lewis and I is that I can't relate to the second half of the book yet, as I have already mentioned.

In the end, Lewis wrote his book because writing was how he coped. Only later did he think to publish it, in the hopes that other bereaved may find it helpful.

I am glad he did that. I did find the book helpful.

I, too, would like to cope by observing another grief. After all, every grief is unique. And I want, like Lewis, to air it all out. Here's how he put it:

I must have some drug, and reading isn’t a strong enough drug now. By writing it all down (all? — no: one thought in a hundred) I believe I get a little outside it. That’s how I’d defend it to H. But ten to one she’d see a hole in the defence.

My H. would probably do so, too. I don't know if this is the best thing to do. But I can at least say that writing it down has given me the ability to get up now and chip away at today's work.