A few days ago I finished reading “A Grief Observed”, C.S. Lewis’ journal that he kept immediately after the death of his wife. One of the things that first struck me was from the Foreward by Madeleine L’Engle.
…when two people marry, each one has to accept that one of them will die before the other.
Wow, well, that certainly was not in the front of my mind when Anita and I got married 15 years ago. In fact, I was most certainly convinced that we would be married a long, long time. My grandparents are 91 and 92 and have been married 58 happy years. My sights were set very high.
C. S. Lewis almost certainly knew that his wife would pre-decease him when he got married. She was already sick from cancer. She went into remission which gave them a couple of extra years together but she ultimately succumbed to it. Yet even knowing she would likely pre-decease him, even knowing of their short time together, his loss was no less bitter than mine, or anyone else who has lost a spouse.
Further, Lewis has an incredible perspective on her death. He says:
‘It was too perfect to last,’ so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic…But it could also mean “This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.’ As if God said, ‘Good, you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on the the next.’
I can admit that some times in the last couple of years, I felt so overwhlemingly blessed with health, home, happiness, amazing children, a loving wife – so blessed that I feared something tragic was destined. Lewis shares that feeling but with a reason so much more God-like than my simple “bad things happen to good people” lament.
…bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.
So, here, between Lewis and L’Engle, we face this universal truth: in all married couples, one of them must face this grief of loss, the very same grief I face today.
Sadly, I cannot prepare you for it. Someone who has been through it, can describe it to you, sympathize with you, but the pain is yours alone. It is part of your process. All of my wonderful neighbors and friends who say to me every day, “I am so sorry,” I know that one day – perhaps soon or far, far in the future – they themselves will be in my shoes and I will say to them, “I am so sorry. I know.”
