
Saved by Lael Johnson and
A Grief Observed (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis)
Saved by Lael Johnson and
It is often thought that the dead see us. And we assume, whether reasonably or not, that if they see us at all they see us more clearly than before. Does H. now see exactly how much froth or tinsel there was in what she called, and I call, my love? So be it. Look your hardest, dear. I wouldn’t hide if I could. We didn’t idealize each other. We
... See morei wonder about this
Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, ‘No toffee now. But when you’ve grown up and don’t really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose’?
If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all.
this is why i feel guilty going back to Jumma, just for Mom
loving her has become, in its measure, like loving Him.
It doesn’t matter that all the photographs of H. are bad. It doesn’t matter—not much—if my memory of her is imperfect. Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links.
I do all the walking I can, for I’d be a fool to go to bed not tired.
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.
Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst.
Why has no one told me these things? How easily I might have misjudged another man in the same situation? I might have said, ‘He’s got over it. He’s forgotten his wife,’ when the truth was, ‘He remembers her better because he has partly got over it.’ Such was the fact. And I believe I can make sense out of it. You can’t see anything properly while
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