JANUARY 9
Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this
morning early. For various reasons, not in themselves at all
mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had been for many
weeks.... And suddenly, at the very moment when, so far,
I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was
something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous,
unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting would
be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one
to use those words. It was as though the lifting of the sorrow
removed a barrier.
—C. S. LEWISSometimes we are unconsciously fearful that if we begin to
move away from our grief, we will lose what contact we
have with the one we miss so much. But maybe it is like
letting go of one’s children when they are ready to move off
on their own. If we loosen our grip, the chances of their re-
turning are much greater, and in ways that are commensur-
ate with who they are now. Perhaps the relinquishing of our
most intense grief makes a space into which a new relation-
ship with the loved one can move. It is the person, after all,
whom we want, not the grief.
May I hold my grief lightly in my hand so it can lift away from
me. My connection to the one I have lost is inviolate; it cannot be
broken.