I wrote my little blog, well one of them, on grief in October, 2013.  I had never read this book by C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, or any excerpts from it…but I stumbled upon it today.  I was surfing the web exploring all my phases and symptoms of grief this time around.  We are dealing with a whole different monster this time and making myself aware and educated is one way that I cope.

I read a few pages from A Grief Observed and lo and behold, I came across the following entry.  I clearly am not a skilled writer as C.S. is…and his writing is far more poignant than my thoughts merely typed out into the blank page of a blog.  However, broken down, I was pleased to read that we shared the same analogy on grief and losing a loved one…it’s kinda like losing a limb. C.S. will never be a biped again.  I am not a fan of being a double amputee, but I feel I will figure it out…eventually.

“Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed