A Grief Observed

[Leslie221]

Hope the following will end up offering a source of comfort and peace to those of you who have lost a loved one to this disease. I came across the works of C.S. Lewis years ago when I was struggling with spiritual beliefs. One of his books, in particular, is a terrific read for those who are grieving. The book is "A Grief Observed." Any public library probably has it. Here's the "review from Amazon.com:

C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself."

This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.

It helped me.

Leslie

[Treebywater]

I hadn't even thought of reading that. Will have to pick it up now. Thanks, Leslie!