By Revd Phil Wales
I enjoy watching films in the cinema, though in recent years, my time spent in the darkness of a modern multiplex is far less than it used to be. This has nothing to do with the kind of films made today but something much more pragmatic. To slightly misquote the faded fictional silent film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, it is not that “pictures got small,” but rather that “TV screens got big”. Yet, there is still something about watching a film where it was intended to be seen which makes the experience more vivid and, sometimes, more memorable.
One such film for me was Shadowlands, which tells the story of C.S. Lewis (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) and his deep love for Joy Davidman (portrayed by Debra Winger), Watching it on its first release in 1993 I came to understand more of the man I had, until then, only known through his children’s books. Engrossed, as I watched, I realised why he had felt compelled to write A Grief Observed, in which he set down his raw responses to the death of his dear, beloved wife.
A Grief Observed is a slim volume which I have now read several times. Nowhere in it does Lewis offer neat solutions or comforting platitudes. It is not, in that sense, what we would call today a “self-help” book, though indeed, it has been of considerable help to many who come to it when the moment is right. In my case it stayed tucked away, unread, on my bookcase for some years. When I eventually turned its pages, I found Lewis’ raw honesty liberating. He does not shy away from capturing the overwhelming power of his emotions but instead gives voice to the agony of his bereavement.
And yet, within the storm of his grief, as he writes, there is a deeper movement. Not a fully worked through resolution, not what we call “closure” but something more akin to transformation. He does not remain in despair; instead, he seems to wrestle with God toward something new. His deep, personal faith does not emerge unscathed, nor does it return to what it once was. Rather, it is reshaped by pain and the love he feels for his late wife, as well as the love he has found in God.
This is what strikes me most from his writing: grieving as a process of remaking, remoulding. It is not a linear, ordered process: it is not predictable, but is lived through in all its messiness. The person who begins by raging against heaven is the same person who, towards the end of his reflections, sees glimpses of a deeper, more mysterious reality. His love for his wife does not diminish on her death but is transformed by it. Similarly, his awareness and relationship with God is changed to something more profound, more true, more real.
Given his purpose in authoring the book, there is no summarising conclusion to A Grief Observed. And that, I think, is its gift. It does not seek to explain away suffering or justify God’s apparent silence in times when we might desperately long for God to be more tangibly present. Lewis bears witness to his own suffering and shows us that grief is a profoundly complex and innately human response to loss. It is something that will hurt and wound us but, ultimately, reshape us and so create in us, in God’s own time, a greater capacity to give and receive love.