Elisabeth Luard on the book that helps her cope with her feelings of loss

A GRIEF OBSERVED, C.S. LEWIS

C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961) should be shelved in a special section of every library labelled ‘Literature of Use When Nothing Else Will Do’ . Shoulder to shoulder might be placed a little booklet containing Sydney Smith’s ‘Advice to a Young Woman in Low Spirits’; Virgil’s Aeneid with special mention for King Priam’s lament, ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum’ ; Christopher Logue’s Selected Poems (1996) with a bookmark slipped into ‘O come all ye faithful’ .

All these are effective first-aid. But Dr Lewis is the man to turn to thereafter, when you think it’s all over but it isn’t. I have lost two of my own before their time, a full-grown daughter and a husband of 40 years. The trigger, the reason for the return of grief, is never anything out of the ordinary. A photograph of a gaptoothed six-year-old in uniform among her classmates, a dark-haired young woman with a swing to her step on a London street, a gaunt old gentleman wearing a jaunty hat standing by the kerb with an anxious look on his face. Writing this piece.

Experience of death, bearing witness to the process of dying, is not something any of us would wish to remember with clarity. Clarity is not necessary for grief. Grief is a presence, a shape without substance. It’s there at dawn, retreats in daylight, returns at nightfall. Absence, nonpresence of the beloved, is public property, a reason to mourn, hold memorials, weep at gravesides, share memories. Grief is inarticulate, refuses consolation, won’t see reason, can only make sense of itself through the words of others.

Lewis traces the path of his own great grief, the loss of a beloved wife, referred to with old-fashioned courtesy only as ‘H’ , and all the more poignant for the briefness of their life together. An unfinished love affair, being unfinished, is as perfect as any human relationship can be. This is consolation of itself – few of us can look back with such simplicity, certainly not me.

“No one ever told me that grief feels so like fear … the same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning”

These things I recognise: ‘No one ever told me that grief feels so like fear … the same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. ’ And again, as the author struggles through maudlin tears to reach reality: ‘Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard … scented the first whiff of cant or slush; then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening. ’ This in particular: ‘I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet … To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. ’ I recognise, too, the sweetness in keeping the final vigil: ‘It is incredible how much happiness, even how much gaiety, we sometimes had together after all hope was gone. How long, how tranquilly, how nourishingly, we talked together that last night!’

So that’s enough of that. Humankind, as Mr Eliot pointed out, cannot bear very much reality. The path to reconciliation for a man of deep religious faith led back, through many a railing, to a benevolent Almighty. I have no such certitude. But the feelings described are my own, the path to acceptance equally stony, the signposts just as bewildering.

The consequence of loving – husband, child, wife, parent, beloved friend – is pay-back time in the Garden of Eden. And when the bill comes in, there’s no gentler guide than the great Christian apologist, Clive Staples Lewis, first line of defence for those of us in need of useful books at times of grief.