Grief and the reality of others

This paper aims to contribute to an emerging view in the literature on grief, namely, that grief discloses certain insights. My claim is that grief over the death of a loved one has the power to disclose our everyday failure to see the reality of others and to reveal the kind of reorientation required in the struggle to overcome that blindness. I develop this through a close reading of C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. In his grief, Lewis struggles to see the reality of his lost other. But that difficulty radiates outwards to encompass the reality of everyday others. What Lewis describes as “learning to be taken out of ourselves” is, I suggest, key to bringing the reality of others into view.