No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the
sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same
restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a
sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in
what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting.
Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is
empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me . . .
An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m afraid of being an
embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see
people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll
‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t . . .
And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps more strictly, like suspense. Or
like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a
permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I
can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had
too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty
successiveness . . .
C. S. Lewis, from A Grief Observed
