A circle touching my circle

A good friend of mine lost someone this weekend, and though I didn't know the person he lost, it has totally rocked me spiritually and emotionally since I heard the news. I think it is partly because of imagining the grief that my friend and others who were close to this person are going through. It just breaks my heart to know what they are going through and to sympathize with them even though I know that I am not even feeling a small percentage of what they are feeling. I think it is also because any time you hear of a death, it just makes you think about your own life and your own world in a different way. It makes you see your worries, pain, and sufferings in a different light compared to what others are suffering. It makes you realize just how fleeting life is.

I also read A Grief Observed by CS Lewis this weekend, and a lot of what he said really hit home because of what I was already on my mind regarding this subject.

Here is one thing, among others, that really hit me. As a Christian, one thing that can be very comforting in a time of grief is that the person who has died has gone on to heaven. Thank God for knowing that and nothing can take away from the relief that one feels knowing that the person is in "a better place". But as much comfort as that is, it doesn't help with the pain of separation that friends and family feel.

CS Lewis, talking about his wife's death, describes his feelings regarding this. "Suppose that the earthly lives she and I shared for a few years are ... spheres or globes. Where the plane of Nature cuts through them - that is, in earthly life - they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres). Two circles that touched. But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me 'she goes on'. But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible... And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where 'the former things have passed away'.

As CS describes, friends and family long for that time that they were able to experience life together with their loved one, and that is the one thing that cannot be given back.