A Grief Observed
​C.S. Lewis

"Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.  
It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer.  
Is is not a truncation of the process but one of the phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.  
We are taken out of ourselves by the loved one when he is here.  
Then comes the tragic figure dance in which
we must learn to be taken out of ourselves
​through the bodily presence is withdrawn."