On Death, Grief, Suffering, and Loss
I don’t doubt there can be a certain utility in pain, but it’s not an idea that I find comfort in; nor is it a condition to which I aspire.
For the first time since I began this Substack 18 months ago, I’ve found myself in a place where it’s been difficult to keep on top of publishing daily.
The truth is, our family recently experienced a tragedy unlike any I’ve ever experienced.
On April 13, my 17-year-old niece Lucy died in a car accident. It happened in broad daylight on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Lucy had finished her chores and was driving over to see her boyfriend when, for some reason we’ll probably never know, her vehicle went off the road and struck a tree.
Lucy was in many ways like a daughter to us. She was just a treasure. Beautiful, smart, fun, and sassy. (You can read her obituary here.) So naturally the last couple weeks have been a struggle.
We’ve all been grieving, but Lucy’s death has been hardest on her parents. I love them both dearly, and our family has tried to offer theirs as much comfort and help as we can. But there’s nothing that can erase the pain they feel.
It has been a difficult few weeks, but also a time for reflection on important things: meaning, suffering, grief, loss, pain, and joy.
During a service we held for Lucy at her school, I noted that Psalms tells us the Lord grows near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. The idea that God uses pain in our lives to reach us was an idea C.S. Lewis wrote about in his book The Problem With Pain.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world,” Lewis wrote.
I don’t doubt there can be a certain utility in pain, but it’s not an idea that I find comfort in; nor is it a condition to which I aspire.
Lewis makes persuasive arguments in this book, but the one that most moved was a different work: A Grief Observed.
Lewis wrote the book in 1960 and 1961 following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, and it is perhaps my favorite non-fiction work written by Oxford/Cambridge philosopher.
A Grief Observed has the same depth as many of Lewis’s other works, but is written with more compassion and raw honesty than almost any other book I can think of.
Here are a dozen passages that stood out to me:
“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. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. 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.”
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”
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.”
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”
“Grief ... 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.”
“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.”
“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.”
“If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.”
“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
My deepest condolences to you and your family.
That is unspeakably awful. I am so sorry for your, and your family's, tragic loss.