Wow, so I was kind of dreading reading this since it's 10pm and I still have other homework tonight (this is what I get for procrastinating yet again). Man am I glad I read this, and not just because I promised Professor Corrigan I would read the rest of our assignments on time from now on (even though that's why i read it in the first place!). For some reason, I always forget how much I love Lewis' works until I pick one up and read it.
One of my favorite lines from this chapter was this: "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." I love how he uses this sort of oxymoronish sentence to depict what is reality. The sky is obviously present, and is all over the place. But someone's absence means they are not present, yet it is still felt everywhere. That sentence kind of connects with the last thing he said in this chapter, which I also love: "But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice- that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child."
I can see that he is experiencing real grief, the kind of grief that comes only when you lose someone so dear to you that you feel you can't live without them. I love that he doesn't try to preach to himself, but instead just says exactly what he is feeling. God is still real, but so are we. It is ok for us to say exactly what we are feeling, especially when we our feelings are so obviously real.
There aren’t many feelings that have such intensity as grief, but Lewis touches on one of the very few that do: love. He loved H. so much that he felt it even in the very core of his being. The feeling of grief is very much the same as love in power, but totally different at the same time. But it is a feeling none the less, and is as real as the person we have lost.
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I somewhat had the same feelings of dreading the read because I waited to the last moment, but just like you, I remembered how interesting CS Lewis's literature can become.
ReplyDeleteThe phrase, "Her absence is like the sky, spreading over everything," was clearly one of my favorite quotes of the reading assigned. I remember how we spoke in our group on the idea of that quote's deepness. I also agree grief is extremely intense and very well connected to love.