Shared Grief: a letter to C.S. Lewis

Spring 2019

Dear C.S. Lewis,

Something happened to me a couple weeks ago that changed the way I think. I write to you in hopes that by telling you about it, I can finally make sense of it. There is no way for you to receive my letter but I write it anyway. I first read your stories when I was around nine years old, flipping through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on the floor of my older brother’s room while he wasn’t there. I believe in those days I had to climb on a chair to reach the prized C.S. Lewis bookshelf. My brother Ernest was the keeper of our Chronicles of Narnia box set with original watercolor illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Over the course of my childhood, I read the whole series more times than I can remember. Scraps of paper served as bookmarks and the corners crumpled a bit from being well-loved. We have two copies of The Horse and His Boy because a family friend misunderstood our lending and “borrowed” our first copy for a couple years. These seven Narnia books helped foster my love of reading. Your sense of wonder and cherishing of fairy tales was a breath of fresh air. I loved the talking animals, the adventures, and, most of all, the character of Lucy Pevensie. She was the youngest, like me, and could see Aslan the lion before anyone else. I wanted to be like her.

Each night, I would fall asleep to music or audiobooks playing quietly on my plastic Hello Kitty stereo. Our CD box set of Focus on the Family Radio Theatre’s Productions of The Chronicles of Narnia lived on top of my dresser despite belonging to the whole family. That album remained in my possession for several years, at my insistence. In the stillness of my thoroughly pink bedroom, I would exercise my imagination’s muscles and listen to the actors bring Narnia to life. Occasionally I mumbled the lines along with them, reciting favorite passages as my eyelids grew heavy. It was as if I were putting my ear up to your door and eavesdropping on a breathtaking fantasy.

Your early years unfold within the pages of Surprised by Joy: “It will be clear that at this time- at the age of six, seven, and eight- I was living almost entirely in my imagination; or at least that the imaginative experience of those years now seems to me more important than anything else” (Lewis, Surprised by Joy 12-13). I count it a privilege to have had a similar childhood, thanks to the encouragement of my mother and father. I often daydreamed about the world of Narnia and Aslan, both of which were more real to me than most places I passed each day. I would stare out the car window at the scrappy woods on the edge of the parkway and imagine talking beasts and fauns running through them. In my mind’s eye, centaurs and dryads nimbly skipped over fallen logs and mossy rocks while birdsong filled the air. All your creatures landed safely on the leaf-strewn forest floor before continuing to run and laugh together. My personal version of Narnia blended with the world around me, making the mundane excursions of life seem much bigger and grander. My life felt small, but within Narnia - I could be anything I wanted to be. Your Narnia, the original, never felt far away. It was tucked away in a book on Ernest’s shelf, waiting for me to go back and step into its magic.

When I thought of you, Mr. Lewis, I imagined you sitting in an armchair with a pipe and reading a book. You were an intelligent and wise man in your fifties, not exactly an approachable figure. I used to think that you were too famous and important to reach out to, as shyness often stifled my attempts to speak to people besides my family. Your smile in the pictures was friendly but I couldn’t help but get frustrated with you sometimes. On a few occasions, I complained to my brothers about how short the Narnia series is - compared to other books in the library. I wished you would write more Narnia books but I knew that you could not.

I wanted to live in Narnia and be a Queen alongside my family. My “castle” of choice was a big church we passed on the way to weekly music lessons. Riverside Church towers above other buildings on the West Side of Upper Manhattan and can be easily seen from the West Side Highway. Its tall spire, stained glass windows, and gargoyles look straight out of a storybook. I never saw the interior so I made one up. In my dream, that structure held a great throne room with four thrones, for my Uncle Chris and Aunt Pilar and my parents to sit on. Next to my parents was my spot, a small chair with a purple cushion. My cousin Nathaniel sat on a similar throne next to his parents. We were all smiling with crowns on our heads and I couldn’t wish for anything more. Upon waking, I continued to build my own private world, with dense forests, fairy gardens, and giant houses full of friendly, smiling people. I seldom thought about the day when my parents would pass away. Those thoughts only existed in my nightmares.

You see, I thought we had time. Our family situation evolved as my brothers left for college and I grew up. No matter how old I got or what was happening in the world, I could always return to your Narnia — safely preserved in our box set on Ernest’s shelf. But like the Pevensie children, I eventually had to leave the fairy tale world behind and return to our circumstances. My wake up call arrived when I was fifteen years old, on the night my parents called me into their room and revealed that my mother’s biopsy results from the previous week had arrived. The doctors found cancerous cells. Startled into reality, I took off my imaginary crown; I wasn’t a Queen in a world I could control. Cancer wasn’t supposed to come and afflict my mother. That was beyond what I could comprehend — those types of things happened to other people.

Three years after my mother’s diagnosis, I graduated from high school. In May, she was strong enough to attend the ceremony and her smile lit up the entire day. She ignored the chronic pain that never lessened and hugged me tight. A mere three months later, my mother lay swathed in a starchy hospital gown in a cramped room at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. My family remained at her side around the clock: my aunt, my brothers, and my father. I forced myself to pack up my belongings and travel to freshman orientation, at a college over two hundred miles away from home.“Welcome Week” did not feel like a welcome, as no one could understand that my mother was in hospice care and slipping away. I couldn’t join the crowds of exuberant young people dancing and yelling; I couldn’t immerse myself in the group activities and games. Within days of my arrival at college, she was gone. I wandered around campus, becoming lost and adamantly refusing to ask for directions. My mother passed away during my first week of college; your mother passed away when you were only eight years old.

During that first semester at college, I took a class about J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, and you. We read a selection of works from each author and spent hours in discussion on the themes, meanings, and applications of them. For the whole semester, I sat solemnly in the corner of the room- speaking quietly, if at all. The college environment felt alien as new relationships struggled to grow in the soil of my grief. I felt cheated out of what was supposed to be an exhilarating period of change. Unlike the young men and women around me, I was seriously adrift - without tether or anchor.

My search for some explanation of my feelings eventually led me to author Therese A. Rando, a clinical psychologist, who wrote several books on the topic of loss and coping, including Grieving. I agree with everything in her book because in her words I see myself, my brothers, and my father. Each new paragraph is like a mirror into my memory, pinpointing where I was emotionally and mentally during the days of deepest grief. She writes of the loss of a parent, “Like a community or institution which loses its archives in a fire, we have been stripped of a form of documentation of our lives and our history. We also have lost the direct links to our past and to unremembered parts of ourselves” (Rando, Grieving 144).

I’ve been told too many times by well-meaning people, “It is a part of the cycle of life to lose your parents. You need to become independent.” Knowledge of this cycle did not ease my pain. My mother was gone. Therese Rando was right because part of my identity was gone too. Among hundreds of strangers, I was no longer known as “Juanita’s daughter.” I became the one resident on my dormitory floor who didn’t want to paint mugs for Mother’s Day or join my neighbors for spontaneous movie nights. I didn’t have the energy to engage in those things.

This season of growth and higher education felt bitter after the joy that used to be mine. My childhood felt like love. You defined “Need-love” as what “sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother’s arms” (Lewis, The Four Loves 1). In those moments of agony, I was newly lonely and frightened. My mother was nowhere I could reach her. Rando observes, “In the best of all possible worlds, love would not bring pain. Yet, in our world the reality is undeniable. When we love someone we inevitably set ourselves up for pain and grief when that love is severed” (Rando, Grieving 11). As a child, I lived in the best of all possible worlds. As a college student, I lived in the actual world, the one where cancer brings separation and grief.

During my darkest days, someone recommended I read A Grief Observed- all about your wife’s passing and your faith. I clumped down the library’s stairs to the lower level and wandered the aisles for ten minutes scanning shelves for the book’s call number. The librarian had explained to my class how to find books a few weeks prior but I hadn’t paid enough attention so I embarrassingly made laps and tried to look like I knew what I was doing. Upon finally locating your book, I laid my heavy backpack aside and pulled up a chair. Skeptical, stressed, and largely unfocused, I soon became lost in A Grief Observed, reading the majority of the book in one sitting. So many of its pages felt like the inside of my mind: a long, twisted hallway full of locked doors, a freezing cold wasteland, countless nauseous hours spent in emotional isolation. My world seemed off-kilter, like a badly hung picture on a wall. How did you find words when none of my words could name this feeling of waiting and dread? Overwhelmed and inwardly turbulent, I left A Grief Observed on the re-shelving cart and did not finish reading it to the end. That mistake left me frustrated and without closure. I didn’t try to pick it up for over a year. The grief was too near.

The second time I read your book, I was in a much more peaceful state. I wanted to hear you again and see your words through fresh eyes. Your first paragraph opened with, “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” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 3). I couldn’t have said it better myself. You reached a clarity that I struggled to explain to most people. “There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 3). Yes, Mr. Lewis, I felt the same way. I also found it hard to breathe under my blanket of numbness. Emily Dickinson captured this feeling with the line: “after great pain, a formal feeling comes.” This pain cannot be ignored or wished away. It demands to be felt. Only when you feel it, can it let you go.

You admitted, “An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 10). My friends from high school who knew me before my mother’s passing found it awkward to talk about her. They simply didn’t bring it up. My new college friends spoke of her only when I did. Most people here at school grew quiet or changed the subject when I tried to explain what it felt like to be without my mother. The awkward distance between our lives was too great for them to cross. Amidst those conversations lie a few gems – rare minutes when a willing heart listened. I cherished those precious conversations. During my early months of grieving, I simply fell into silence and bit my tongue. I hated making anyone uncomfortable. I hated not being able to talk about my mother. Talking and keeping quiet were both undesirable options.

In the modern age, medical technology has improved the prognosis of people diagnosed with cancer. There are surgeries, radiation treatments, and clinical trials. Despite these advancements, various cancers have taken the lives of both my grandfathers and now my mother. Your words captured a deep-seated fear in my heart. “Cancer, and cancer, and cancer. My mother, my father, my wife. I wonder who is next in the queue” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 12). In my darkest moments, I’ve feared the same thing. I dread the day when I’ll have to say goodbye to my father and brothers. I briefly considered building walls to keep from getting hurt again but now I tear those walls down. We both know loving another person is a risk worth taking — I’ve read enough of your books to gather your stance on why loving others is worth the pain.

That brings us back to my epiphany a few weeks ago. I found myself pulling the Chronicles of Narnia box set off my shelf and gravitating towards The Magician’s Nephew. I reunited with Digory and Polly as they discovered new worlds and were quite brave in the face of scary situations. Narnia’s creation account is delightful to me because in music we can draw nearer to beauty, beauty apart from words or language. I love the way Aslan sings a new land into existence, he creates the “music of spheres” for Narnia. I reread the story with fresh eyes and noticed the theme of parental illness, woven into the book all along. When Digory and Polly first meet, Digory tells Polly about his problems and does not try to hide his tears from her:

‘And if your father was away in India - and you had to come and live with an Aunt and an Uncle who’s mad (who would like that?) - and if the reason was that they were looking after your Mother - and if your Mother was ill and was going to - going to - die.’ Then his face went the wrong sort of shape as it does if you’re trying to keep back your tears (Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew 5-6).

As your characters go, Digory was nowhere near my favorite. A bit bossy, he was not really the type of person I looked up to for an example. His harsh treatment of Polly and selfish actions to satisfy his curiosity brought evil into Narnia and I wasn’t too invested in his story on previous reads of the book. But this time, to my surprise, Digory’s voice spoke to me plainly. I felt empathy for a character I had previously dismissed. I could see him clearly and my heart ached for him and his mother. In Digory’s story I see myself. Terminal illness touches every part of a family, especially children. Rando adds, “Family members involved with a terminally ill individual are in a singularly unenviable position. In most cases, they are forced to witness the progressive debilitation of their loved one without the power to stem the inevitable course of loss and death.” (Rando, Loss and Anticipatory Grief 98). None of us could stem this tide.

I wish no one had to feel this pain of grief in childhood, but I am aware that you did. You reported in Surprised by Joy, “Children suffer not (I think) less than their elders, but differently. For us boys the real bereavement had happened before our mother died. We lost her gradually as she was gradually withdrawn from our life into the hands of nurses and delirium and morphia, and as our whole existence changed into something alien and menacing, as the house became full of strange smells and midnight noises and sinister whispered conversations” (Lewis, Surprised by Joy 16). In Digory’s story, I see you. Your mother was taken away bit by bit and I am no stranger to that. For my family, we said a long goodbye for over two years. Having time did not make the parting any easier. Eight-year-old me would not have been able to comprehend what you felt. Eight-year-old me dreaded goodbyes.

I kept reading The Magician’s Nephew that afternoon, ignoring the clock ticking on the wall. I didn’t want to leave the story. Later in the book, Aslan confronts Digory about the consequences of his actions and asks him if he is ready to undo the damage he has done to the new world of Narnia. Digory falters and thinks of his mother, wanting to fix what was wrong and make her well again.

I asked, are you ready?” said the Lion. “Yes,” said Digory. He had had for a second some wild idea of saying “I’ll try to help you if you’ll promise to help my Mother,” but he realized in time that the Lion was not at all the sort of person one could try to make bargains with. But when he had said “Yes,” he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out: “But please, please - won’t you- can’t you give me something that will cure Mother? (Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew 153-154)

To my surprise, tears began to fill my eyes. I used to be in Digory’s shoes, pleading to God for my mother to recover and be well again. I wanted her to be healthy more than anything. Nothing else mattered in comparison. I was willing to go anywhere and do whatever needed to be done. Paul F. Ford writes in the Companion to Narnia, “Digory’s desperate desire to help his seriously ill mother reflects Lewis’s crisis over his own mother’s illness, during which he experienced the appeal of magic and the failure of petitionary prayer, the immediate cause of his abandoning any faith in an all-powerful, all-good God” (Ford 105). Paul Ford thinks that you put some of yourself in the story and I agree with him. I’m so grateful you gave us your story in your autobiography, to reassure us that your story did not end there. My faith pilgrimage was also challenged during my mother’s illness. Initially I was angry at God for letting my mother get ill, for allowing her to be in such pain. I was sure that she was going to recover and felt betrayed when she did not. Eventually I grew to realize that I need to look to God directly and that is when I recognized how He loved my mother and held her through every minute of her illness.

My favorite passage from The Magician’s Nephew is in Chapter Twelve. In this chapter, I discovered how you put a truth that is so much bigger than any fairy tale into your children’s fantasy series. Digory learns that Aslan can know his pain when he stops talking and glances up into Aslan’s face for the first time: “What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes” (Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew 154). The magnificent Lion, the creator of the world they stand in, cries with the human boy who has spoiled his handiwork. How much more does God, who loves us infinitely, feel our sorrows? You captured something there, something beautiful. Digory “felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. ‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another’” (Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew pg. 153-154). Aslan and Digory can share this grief in a world of creatures who have no idea how heavy the burden is.

You showed us the loving response of a God who knows the pain we feel and has carried it for us. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (English Standard Version, Isaiah 53.3). Jesus Christ is acquainted with your grief and with mine. He loves my mother far beyond anything I can fathom. He brought her to Himself, into His glory.

At the end of The Magician’s Nephew, Digory is given an apple by Aslan that heals his mother. She eats it and falls asleep to Digory’s relief. She recovers, to the surprise of the doctors. Digory and his parents live happily ever after. While that joyous scene did not play out for either you or me, Digory’s journey still comforts me. Aslan’s plan was bigger than anything Digory could imagine. I believe that God’s plan is bigger than anything I can imagine. My grief tested my faith and stretched it beyond its limits. I have continued on because I believe God’s promises and I believe in His goodness. I believe that we were made for another world, a world of wholeness and healing.

God can’t be used as a road; He isn’t a magician. “If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as means, you’re not really approaching Him at all” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 68). How true. God is our goal, the only goal worth having or wanting. We should be looking into His face when we are lost because God can find us when we cannot find ourselves. I turned to the Scriptures with a new perspective on a well-known verse, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (ESV, Matthew 5.4). We shall be comforted and made whole again, this I believe in my heart.

You wrote once, “You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 45). I’ve dried my tears and now is the time for me to see more clearly. You said, “There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time” (Lewis, A Grief Observed 62). Each day I arose and kept on living, with the knowledge that this is where I should be. I want to live the way my mother did, with courage and joy and a kind heart. This healing of my heart is a gift two years in the making.

Although we have never met and never will in this world, I see we found and loved the same Lord. You don’t need me to explain what happened. We don’t have to fill silence with awkward apologies. Our grief for our mothers was heavy to bear but it did not end us. Our hearts are healed; we shall be comforted.

I go onward and look forward. As a child, I found friends in Narnia. As a bereaved eighteen-year-old, I learned about your second encounter with loss. Thank you, Mr. Lewis — Jack — for sharing the words that I could never find. They sustained me during my sojourn through the Shadowlands of sorrow, over fifty years after your passing.

Let us be good to one another.

Sincerely,

Katharine Chamberlain

Works Cited

English Standard Version. Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com. Accessed 23 Jan. 2019.

Ford, Paul F. Companion to Narnia. 5th ed., Harper San Fransisco, 2005.

Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed. HarperOne, 1994.

Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960.

Lewis, C. S. The Magician's Nephew. HarperTrophy, 2000.

Rando, Therese A. Grieving. Lexington Books, 1988.

Rando, Therese A. Loss and Anticipatory Grief. Lexington Books, 1986.

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