Tuesday, October 27, 2009

What is that quote by C.S. Lewis about grief?


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: year of magical thinking grief; year of magical thinking grief c.s. lewis; grief c.s. lewis; grief c.s. lewis quotes; grief c.s. lewis quotes didion; "I am beginning to understand why grief feels"

Why
: Joan Didion quotes him in The Year of Magical Thinking, which I am listening to on audiobook, so I don't have the text in front of me. Oof, how frustrating:
Anyway, I don't mean the opening line to A Grief Observed, which Lewis wrote when his wife died of cancer:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
Answer: Here is the passage:
I think I'm beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense; it comes from the frustration of so many impulses that have come habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs.
Source: Agenda Bender; Google Books

The More You Know: I also like this, from Didion (about husband John Gregory Dunne):
I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response. . . . There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back.


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