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After seeing the movie Freuds Last Session I wanted to know more about CS Lewis. I had read his Narnia series in my 20s. This was in my partners extensive book collection and I started to read it. My confession here, I only read the Afterword. Amazing. Gave me all I wanted to know about CS Lewis. Fitted in well with what I had learnt from the movie. I am interested in how he went from being an atheist to a Christian. I‘ll try 1 more of his books.

A Grief Observed is a compilation of longhand writings take from the notebook journals of C.S. Lewis chronicling his thoughts over the loss of his wife. I listened to this book on audio. And it's fairly short, which is probably a good thing, and nearly bailed before the introduction was over. To be honest if it had been any longer than what it was, I still would have bailed on it. The content is interesting, (cont in comments)...

This is Lewis's journal observing his grief for his wife and while everyone's grief is unique to them, there's always stands you can pull out that relate to you and I definitely found strands of my own grief for my sister in these pages.

I'm not here to rate anyone's grief, it's a five star from me.

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” #grief #loss

“Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead; physical pain is like the steady barrage on a trench in World War One, hours of it with no let-up for a moment. Thought is never static; pain often is.”

#grief #mourning #death #loss

“And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort.” #grief #mourning #ebook #cloudLibrary

“There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don‘t really mind so much, not so very much, after all....People get over these things. Come, I shan‘t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense‘ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.” #grief

For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives - to both, but perhaps especially to the woman - a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer.

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

For in grief nothing ‘stays put.‘

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…We want to prove to ourselves that we are lovers on the grand scale, tragic heroes; not just ordinary privates in the huge army of the bereaved, slogging along and making the best of a bad job.

You can‘t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.

Thought is never static; pain often is.

This is one of the things I‘m afraid of. The agonies, the mad midnight moments, must, in the course of nature, die away. But what will follow? Just this apathy, this dead flatness? Will there come a time when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street, because I shall take the squalor as normal? Does grief finally subsided into boredom tinged by faint nausea?

And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn‘t seem worth starting anything. I can‘t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.

How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H.? That is not happening already? Slowly, quietly, like snowflakes — like the small flakes that come when it‘s going to snow all night - little flakes of me, my impressions l, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery‘s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don‘t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It may be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once.

Watched Shadowlands last night with the hubby (if you haven‘t seen, I highly recommend the version with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger) before settling down to read this. This week was the 10th anniversary of my Oma‘s passing and I‘m finding it a little hard. Perhaps this will help.

Not much reading today...but some projects were completed

The most unbearably beautiful book. I‘d barely read anything CS Lewis wrote for adults before and every page of it really hit me in the chest. I have no idea how a grieving widower jotting his feelings down in half full notebooks he found round the house managed to produce this

1. I've often read the last paragraph or maybe the last page.
2. I haven't finished a book in months! I can't remember.
@TheSpineView #two4tuesday

Thank you so much for your thoughtful cards and this beautiful gift. #litsylove is such a great community and I'm so grateful to all of you. @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @ bookgoil 🥰

https://www.vox.com/culture/22334337/grief-observed-c-s-lewis-pandemic-loss

#QuotsyMar21 Day 3: #Rebound

Isn‘t it ironic, a vaccine is on the way but not soon enough for my beautiful grandmother, Gladys “Skippy” Stouder, who died of Covid earlier today...🕊🌸💕

I‘m very late to #thoughtfulthursday , but I move in #spoonie time 😅. Thank you, @Gezemice for the tag! ❤️
1. I can‘t have candy anymore, but Hubby makes some bangin avocado chocolate pudding and pumpkin seed butter, that taste even better than Reese‘s when combined. 😍
2. The Strangers (2008) *shudder*
3. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” -C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis wrote this after the death of his beloved wife. Their time together was short, but it was all the more poignant because their connection was so intense. He was left wishing for all the years they might have had together. He is so honest about his pain making him question his faith.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."

Definitely was an interesting look into C.S. Lewis‘ thought process as he grieved the loss of his wife.

Such truth.

Well, they say people come
They say people go
And I should but I can't let you go
And I know that you're with me and the way you will show
And you're with me wherever I go
And you give me this feeling, this everglow
What I wouldn't give for just a moment to hold
Because, I live for this feeling, this everglow

#everglow #julycoldplay

"But there are two questions here. In which sense may it be a house of cards? Because the things I am believing are only a dream, or because I only dream that I believe them?"

"Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. Beethoven went deaf."

"It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible."

#quotsyjune19 #blanket

A beautiful book CS Lewis wrote after the death of his wife.

I've been largely absent from Litsy since my dad passed away in November. I've kept reading for the most part, since reading fills the silence, but even the idea of social media was oppressive. But I've had #24in48 on my calendar since the last one, and this is the first in which I actually have very few plans for the weekend, so here I am.

I'm pretty sure I read this book years ago, but I didn't really feel it then. Now, every word rings true.

1. Not really food, but I needed all the tea this morning and, I put it in the biggest mug I own.
2. I think this completes my C.S. Lewis collection.
3. 40
4. I buy any aesthetically pleasing edition of a classic I find. I own 4 copies of Pride and Prejudice.
5. Not sure yet. If I do, it will be to Canada. (Currently planning a trip to England/Scotland/France for 2020.)
#humpdaypost

#quotsyjan19 @TK-421
Prompt: Process

#QuotsyJan19 Day 9: The #Process of grief is a constant and ongoing state. I have yet to read this book.

And just like that, my 2018 challenge is over... now to keep reading anyway 🤣

They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he‘d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one.

"There is a sort of invisible #blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

#LitsyClassics @Sarah83

A book I highly recommend to anyone who has had a loved one die. It was a special salve to me.