Some years ago, coming out of my husband’s funeral, a friend handed me a copy of C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. She was a close friend, no stranger to pain; someone I trusted. I learned also to trust this book. Ostensibly an account of Lewis’ response to the death of his wife, Joy Davidman (“H.” in the book), its first sentence took almost bodily hold: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” It helped explain why, for a time, I could no longer read: grieving disables, as if one were concussed. It acknowledged the fog that descends after violent feeling, blanking out the world, making it a grey, indifferent place. Grieving is not a state; as Lewis discerns, it happens inchoately, ineluctably, over a long period of time. Contradictory yet