Two days ago, I said something in bitter anger.
"I don't think I'll see my mother again. Why would God be kind enough to let me? He already took her." It was the day after the anniversary of her death and I had been despondent all day, barely able to get out of bed. The words felt wrong as I said them, but they were honest. In that moment, I truly wondered if Heaven existed, because how could a God who took so abruptly also be a God who gave so generously?
A day ago, still feeling raw and pretending to be OK, I saw a random Facebook post detailing the depths of cruelty with which Charles Dickens, a writer whose craft I once deeply admired and wished to emulate, had treated his wife Catherine. It was enough to kick the legs out from my quasi equilibrium and I spiraled quite badly for several hours. The chief thoughts in my mind were: "has any historical man ever truly loved his wife and been the complete opposite of Dickens?" (which was not a logical worry. My father loved my mother as deeply and totally as any man has ever loved any woman. But it was the principle of Dickens failing so utterly as a husband, as a HUMAN, that shook me) and "why is it always random horrible things that hit you when you are already struggling? Why not good things, comforting things, life-affirming things?" (I was not nearly so eloquent at the time obviously. It was more a series of pained cries and moans, of angry tears and frenzied, unhelpful internet searches and infuriated tumblr posts.)
Less than two hours later, multiple people had answered my cries of "has any man ever loved his wife???" by pointing to C. S. Lewis. I have loved Lewis's works since I was very young--in fact, he had been a favorite author of my mother and I both. I also half remembered something about the great love of his life being a much older woman whom his friends were ambivalent about. Why were people citing this as a great love story?
It turned out that I was thinking of Mrs. Janie Moore, whom Lewis lived with due to a pact made with her son Paddy during WWI that whoever lived would care for the other's family. She was an important part of Lewis's life, but she was not at all whom people were talking about.
They were talking about Joy Davidman. And about the most achingly beautiful love story I have ever heard.
Joy and Lewis were best friends, intellectual sparring partners who delighted in each other's minds, and initially seemed to be platonic soul mates. Joy had feelings for Lewis but he saw her as a friend. A close, beloved friend, a friend he had entered into a civic marriage with in order to ensure she could stay in the UK, but still a friend.
Then she was diagnosed with bone cancer. And Lewis married her in her hospital room because he realized with a flash that he couldn't bear to lose the love of his life, and since he was going to, he was going to make sure that their happiness was as complete as it could possibly be.
Her cancer went into remission, they had three wonderful years together, then it returned, resistant to treatment.
She died.
He died three years later, after wrestling with faith and returning to it.
Now.
This story is sad. It is HORRIBLY sad.
Except it isn't.
Because that wasn't the end. I knew it in my heart the moment I read about them for the first time, crying again but with tears of wonder, not anger.
I don't even know exactly WHY I was so sure that Lewis and Joy's story didn't go "they loved, she died, he died. the end." because I am as a rule very cynical. But. Upon reading about them I couldn't even pretend to be cynical. And seeing their photo made it even clearer.
The way he looks at her. It's a gaze that looks like they spent their entire lives together, not less than a decade.
If God is anything like who He says He is, He wouldn't destroy such love. He would reward it. Make it eternal. Make it a great, powerful act of defiance against death and evil and cancer and pain and loss that their love burned brightly here, but is like a single candle compared to the sun itself with how much brighter it burns in Heaven.
I have not been the most faithful of His children, nor the most obedient, or respectful, or appreciative. I lost my mother six years ago. And was angry at Him for that until....honestly until tonight. I felt that He should have done something. Anything. Other people are miraculously healed, why wasn't she?
And then I heard a story even sadder than mine that somehow didn't make me sad. It made me trust God MORE. He gave Lewis and Joy to each other under the WORST circumstances. But their story didn't END!!! It ended from OUR side. But Lewis has been inseparable from Joy since November 22, 1963. I have ZERO doubt of that. You can't see the photo where he is looking at her with SUCH fondness and think that God would take that from him. From her. From them.
I still will always mourn my mother. It would have made me happy beyond measure to have her at my wedding, or to hear the joy in her voice when told someday that she's a grandmother. But. I WILL see her again. Her faith was steadfast. She is there. Honestly, she's probably already met Lewis and Joy. She loved Narnia and we listened to those books on tape on REPEAT during my childhood. I have no doubt she ran up to introduce herself as soon as she saw the two of them.
As I said at the beginning of this piece: two days ago, I said something in bitter anger.
"I don't think I'll see my mother again. Why would God be kind enough to let me? He already took her."
And then the day after that I first heard about Lewis and Joy. And tonight the full picture of God's goodness came to me when I saw their photograph and knew--KNEW WITH UTTER UNSHAKABLE CERTAINTY--that if God is who He says He is, then Lewis and Joy have been together for just shy of 62 years, with eternity to follow.
There is a photo I love of my mother and I. I have my arm around her at the beach in winter, both of us smiling.
If I am so sure that God would not let Lewis and Joy's love die, then I have to believe with the same certainty that when I die, one of the first things I hear will be my mother's voice welcoming me home.
It feels strange losing that anger, that resentment, that feeling that everything the Bible says is just slightly too good to be true.
It feels even stranger that what prompted my realization was a story of earthly loss.
And stranger yet that my pain from the loss of my mother would be eased by learning about the life of a writer whose work we both loved and who in my mind will always be connected to her.
God truly does have a sense of humor. But not a cruel, capricious one. It's the type of sense of humor that makes you realize that He really is the God of love, in all of its forms, all-encompassing.
It feels good to breathe easily again.
