"You know, looking back, I see now that I was too wrapped up in my memory of Joy. I had yet to learn that passionate grief does not link us with the dead. It cuts us off from them. You can't see clearly when your eyes are blinded with tears. But there comes a time when ... I don't know ... you do start to see again ...."

-- C.S. Lewis

There is no question that Joy's death rocked C. S. Lewis to his core and caused him to rethink his beliefs. As his stepson Douglas Gresham said, "Jack never lost his faith in the existence of God. He started to be tempted to doubt the nature of God. But to expect a man to come through the realization of his grief and to be happy? I'm not happy about it now and it's what - 50 years later? The grief of my mother's death still hurts."

And, true to form, C.S. Lewis did what he had done his entire life when faced with doubts and fears, he wrote about them. Although unwilling at first to publish the book under his real name, "A Grief Observed" was published in 1961 and received immediate acclaim.

Two years after Joy's death, Lewis himself began to suffer heart and other problems. At one point, he was in a coma from which he was not expected to recover. But, like Joy, he surprised everyone and recovered for a time.

On November 22, 1963, Clive Staples Lewis died at The Kilns at the age of 63. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Warren Lewis died on April 9, 1973. Their names are on a single stone bearing the inscription "Men must endure their going hence."

"You really do get stronger, you know. Like Aslan the Lion. Aslan allowed himself to be sacrificed. They cut off his mane. But then it grew back - and he was stronger than ever. Mind you, I like to think that if you looked closely, you could always see the scars. Always!"