TO PETER BIDE, whose wife had died on 17 September: On grief.

20 September 1960

My dear Peter

I have just come in from saying my morning prayers in the wood, including as always one for ‘Peter and Margy and Joy and me’, and found your letter. I hope they are allowed to meet and help one another. You and I at any rate can. I shall be here on Wednesday next. If you could let me have a card mentioning the probable time of your arrival, all the better. If not, I shall just ‘stand by’.

Yes—at first one is sort of concussed and ‘life has no taste and no direction’. One soon discovers, however, that grief is not a state but a process—like a walk in a winding valley with a new prospect at every bend.

God bless all four of us.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III

Compiled in Yours, Jack