When a loved one dies, it changes your life forever. My father's body has been dead for over three years, yet I find I still miss him acutely. The words of C.S. Lewis are particuarly profound when dealing with this subject. After the death of his wife, he wrote A Grief Observed. The following is one of my favorite sections from that book.
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 it 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.
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