A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis, originally published in 1961 under the pseudonym of A.W. Clerk, is a record, a loose journal, of Lewis' thoughts in the first few months after losing his wife, Joy Davidman, to cancer.
Of Lewis' work, It is for me the one most difficult to find any profit in. That is most likely because I have never been faced with the kind of bereavement that Lewis explores in this slim volume. He writes seemingly without any plan, and without any filter, jotting down whatever thought he finds most pressing at the moment. It is raw and painful to read.
The early entries are at times very dark, and find Lewis lashing out in pain; at friends, at God, at himself. At these points, he sounds now and then something more like a wounded animal than the rational apologist he is otherwise thought to be. This seems natural enough and very understandable, but is, again, difficult to read. The great thing is that Lewis, when he had recovered himself, didn't simply toss it all in the trash. As messy as his grieving process was, he preserved it, warts and all.
This reminds me a bit of the spiritual darkness of Bl. Mother Teresa, and how it has been a strange comfort to many Catholics to know that such a devoted and holy person endured such a continuing, confusing and painful estrangement from her Lord. I don't know that she, at bottom, doubted God, but she certainly wondered again and again where the hell He was. This is Lewis' experience throughout much of A Grief Observed.
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 might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once.
Again, I have found less profit in the book than in most of his others. I have personally never come to the point where I have been tempted to believe that God must be either A) only a fantasy, or B) some kind of Cosmic Sadist. I have been able to accept all the trials of my life as having been the results of living in a fallen world, or else just my own stupid fault. Mostly the latter. I've never reached that point where I was shaking my fist at heaven.
It may be tempting to think that this is because of some extra degree of personal holiness, but it is much more likely that I have simply led a sheltered life, and have not been struck with the kind of personal disasters that can so often bring a person to the very end of their rope. It may also be a question of the kind of temperament we are born with, which is not anything that a person can take credit for. Lewis possessed a more mercurial temperament, and where that might have allowed him to doubt God to a greater degree than some, it might also have allowed him to follow Christ with much greater devotion and ardor. Think of Peter. God hates the lukewarm.
It may be that what I have gained from reading A Grief Observed will not be fully realized for some time, though I hope that I am never able to relate very well to the darkest portions of it. In later entries, Lewis comes to remember (I don't believe he ever really forgot) that we are perfected in suffering.
So, I am grateful for the sufferings I've known, but still grateful for my sheltered life.
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