My father came into the room and began to try to convey to my terrified mind things it had never conceived before. It was in fact cancer and followed the usual course; an operation, an apparent convalescence, a return of the disease, increasing pain, and death. My father never fully recovered from this loss.
Children suffer not (I think) less than their elders, but differently. For us 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 We lost her gradually as she was gradually withdrawn from our life into the hands of nurses and delirium and morphia, and as our whole existence changed into something alien and menacing, as the house became full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. If I may trust to my own experience, the sight of adult misery and adult terror has an effect on children which is merely paralysing and alienating. Everything that had made the house a home had failed us; everything except one another. We drew daily closer together (that was the good result) - frightened urchins huddled for warmth in a bleak world.
Grief in childhood is complicated with many other miseries. I was taken into the bedroom where my mother lay dead; as they said, 'to see her', in reality, as I at once knew, 'to see it'. There was nothing that a grown-up would call disfigurement - except for that total disfigurement which is death itself. Grief was overwhelmed in terror. To this day I do not know what they mean when they call dead bodies beautiful. The ugliest man alive is an angel of beauty compared with the loveliest of the dead. Against all the subsequent paraphernalia of coffin, flowers, hearse, and funeral I reacted with horror. To my hatred for what I already felt to be all the fuss and flummery of the funeral I may perhaps trace something in me which I now recognise as a defect but which I have never fully overcome - a distaste for all that is public, all that belongs to the collective; a boorish inaptitude for formality.
When her case was pronounced hopeless I remembered what I had been taught; that prayers offered in faith would be granted. I accordingly set myself to produce by will-power a firm belief that my prayers for her recovery would be successful; and, as I thought, I achieved it. When nevertheless she died I shifted my ground and worked myself into a belief that there was to be a miracle.
With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.
These are the words of C.S. Lewis in this book Surprised by Joy. It seems to be a habit of mine of late to record what I am reading from others... their thoughts, their experiences. Reading this, however, was like reading my own journal. I cannot believe how similar our circumstances were and how extensive our thoughts correlate.
I can definitely relate to Lewis' observation that with the death of his mother came "a distaste for all that is public, all that belongs to the collective; a boorish inaptitude for formality;" and I can see this as true in my friends who have also lost.
Death is never something one gets over. Maybe that's why I write about it now. I need some sort of outlet, a way to continue to express the grief I still feel. Somehow communicating reminds me... and others that this story does exist; and many are living silently with their heartbreaking memories. Like Lewis, I also feel that amidst much fun, pleasure and joy, the reliable, peaceful security that my mother embodied is forever gone. And I will grieve for the rest of my life.
2 years ago
