A Journey Through Grief

November 20, 2002

Last night I was reading A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, which recounts the author’s feeling at the time of his wife’s death from cancer.  Some thoughts are so right:  “There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me.  I find it hard to take in what anyone says. . . I dread the moments when the house is empty.” 

Lewis is a believer, but in his grief he raises some savage questions about the nature of God.  In reading other grief-oriented books in an effort to understand mine, I learn that anger is a normal part of the grieving process.  Lewis is, until he reconciles it in his own mind, angry with God.

But with whom do I, a non-believer, become angry?  Certainly not Peg, the stroke was nothing she would have chosen.  In fact, at the doors of the Operating Room where a somewhat risky procedure to remove the clot from the brain was described to her, the ever-so-practical Peg asked the surgeon:  “What’s the downside?”  The response that there was a 20% chance of death led to Peg’s response that “I’m not ready to die.”  And at age 62 she wasn’t.

But if I can’t get angry with Peg, with whom do I get angry.  I can’t direct the anger at myself since we later learned that she had a small bulge in her heart where the blood pooled and clotted rather than circulated.  The breaking-away of the clot caused the stroke.

I can’t get angry at the medical or nursing staffs of the hospital to which she was taken.  It is a splendid institution (a teaching hospital of the University of Virginia) with extraordinarily kind and compassionate people.  I do not believe there was anything lacking in the care provided her.

I can’t get angry with God:  I don’t believe there is one.

If I can’t get angry, it means that I have to accept -- what is, is.

Then why do I spend so much time crying?  And why do I long so much to feel our mutual embrace one more time?

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November 27, 2002

Grief is a foreign country.  It can only be entered by paying a terrible price -- the loss of a loved one.  Although many have been there, I suppose it is different for all.  The customs of the country are different -- doing things and immediately forgetting that you have done them, crying at any time, the restlessness of needing to complete something right now, the lack of concentration to allow one to complete what seemed so important only moments ago, the pacing of rooms as a tiger in its cage, the moving of objects from one place to another.  What is this bizarre country?  I hope to pass through it quickly but now at seven weeks it seems larger than crossing Texas on foot.  It is a country watered by tears and populated by images of the loved one. However can one survive this country?

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December 20, 2002

I thought back to our visit to Israel in 1982 and the awe-inspiring city of Jerusalem.  During our week’s stay in Jerusalem we stayed at the American Colony Hotel, a venerable hotel built in a former pasha’s palace in East Jerusalem.  The old building, where our room was located, is the actual palace and had a lovely courtyard filled with flowers and blossoming orange trees.  The room was large with an enormously high ceiling and large inward-opening windows.  Peg loved the flowers which were impeccably tended all day.  I loved making love with the scent of orange blossoms filling the room.

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December 28, 2002

“How are you doing?”