On Dying Well

Graham Leo, August, 2014

Ever since I made my first pilgrimage in about 1989 to the grave of C. S. Lewis in the churchyard of Holy Trinity church in the outer Oxford suburb of Headington, I had been puzzled by the inscription on his gravestone: “Men  must endure their going hence”.

Most people respond with some surprise when they see this inscription, imagining that such a great Christian apologist might have had something more inspirational on his final earthly resting-place. 

Most of us might have preferred to see something a little more hopeful, more spiritual, more related to his writings, perhaps something like: Captured by the Great Lion … Safe at last!Or: Home! Home at last! And all the waiting done. Or: This is what I have been longing for all my life.

I don't think that I am the only one to wonder about this. 

Alister McGrath, in his magnificent biography on Lewis, describes the choice of words as “The rather melancholic text Warnie chose for his brother’s gravestone”. [1]

I am fairly sure that even the knowledgeable Walter Hooper, Lewis’s personal secretary in his later years and who knew him well, made a comment on this issue. I can’t find the comment I have in mind in any of my reference books after an extensive search, so it may be that I heard it from Hooper in person. I once spent a couple of hours at the Kilns, the Lewis family home in Oxford, on a rainy afternoon, while Hooper beguiled me with stories about Jack (Lewis was always known as Jack). 

In any event, my recollection is that Hooper has somewhere made a passing comment to the effect that Jack’s brother Warnie (Warren) chose this inscription without any consultation with others and that it may not have been the best choice. I hope I am not injuring his reputation with this half-remembered quote; if I am wrong, I apologise most sincerely.

I recall feeling a little disturbed by this opinion, wherever I heard or read it, knowing how close the two brothers were. Warnie was a fine scholar in his own right. He loved and respected his brother deeply, and felt his loss keenly. He would have been most unlikely not to get this last thing right. He knew his brother well, and he knew how Jack's mind worked.

When they were just young lads, Jack and Warnie's father apparently had a Shakespeare “Quote of the Day” calendar on his desk. This was the quotation open on the day that his wife, their mother, died, in August 1908. Both brothers remembered that day well throughout their lives.

I think I can now throw some more light on the question of the epitaph on C. S. Lewis's grave.

I have just finished re-reading the first book in Lewis’s science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. Right towards the end of the book, I read something I had never noticed in previous readings. The Oyarsa is speaking to Ransom about the ways of the lord of the planet of earth (Satan or Lucifer), contrasting them to the ways of Maleldil (most closely associated in the novel with the one we would call God the Father) in regard to human beings:

… the lord of your world, [i.e. Lucifer] made ... your people ... wise enough to see the death of their kind approaching but not wise enough to endure it. [2]

Although this reference is to the death of whole species and worlds, one gets the impression that Lewis is suggesting that true wisdom also knows how to endure one’s own death, and perhaps even the death of others.

The original phrase “Men must endure their going hence” comes from Shakespeare’s King Lear, "Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all." (Act 5, Sc. 2.) But Lewis knew better than to promote mere ancient stoicism. He converted it to its Christian potential, redeemed it from its humanist roots and gave it Christian wings. How much our own humanist world needs a similar redemption in the way we deal with death!

When someone dies tragically or suddenly, the social media typically reveal outpourings of passion, and, I dare say, pagan superstition. People write comments on Facebook pages, and Memory Books, such as, “Gone forever, but not from my heart”; “Rest in peace, buddy”; “We know you’re always out there, watching over us”; “You're an angel now”; “When we see a new star shining in the heavens, we’ll know that’s you”. Sentimental poems suggest that the person has not really died - they are now the sound of the wind, "the sun on ripened wind, the gentle autumn rain...".

Clearly, not all these could be really true, as some of them are mutually contradictory. No-one seems to mind or bother about this lack of community logic, bound together as they are in the common tragedy of loss. 

In our lack of ancient wisdom, explanations of death and any life hereafter have become mysteries wrapped up in enigmas, poked at by curious children to see what might be inside.

Lewis knew well that death had been thoroughly conquered by Jesus Christ’s own death and subsequent resurrection. This is surely one of the great themes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and of The Great Divorce. 

Nevertheless, death is a journey which each person must undertake. Death induces grief for those remaining, and apprehension at least, for the one about to take the journey. 

“Perfect love casts out fear”, said the apostle John.[3] Lewis knew, and was convinced about, the certainty of the love that had destroyed the enemy, Death. 

But he was also the great pragmatist, the realist who allowed the truth of Christianity to stand alongside the tragedy of life at its harshest and sharpest edge. One of the greatest contributions of Lewis the apologist is that he never shirked reality; he never tried to make Christianity a false veneer over hard facts. Lewis knew that the death of a loved one is hard, very hard.

Yet things must be lived through, no matter how hard they are. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,after Aslan had learned from Lucy of Edmund’s betrayal and capture by the White Witch, we read this exchange:

"Please – Aslan," said Lucy, "can anything be done to save Edmund?"

"All shall be done," said Aslan. "But it may be harder than you think." And then he was silent again for some time. Up to that moment Lucy had been thinking how royal and strong and peaceful his face looked; now it suddenly came into her head that he looked sad as well. (Chapter 12) 

There was a great cost to our redemption – the death of the Son of God. But the difficulty of redemption does not destroy the ultimate victory. The thing must be endured, but not out of mere stoicism that relies on human fortitude and resilience. It was endured for the sake of the joy that was to come.[4]

All human death since the crucifixion is to be endured in the sense that it is a recital of a battle already won, a great victory. After the conquering, there is the celebration, the feasting in the great mead-hall, the telling of stories and recounting of feats of bravery and heroism and the living-out of love-in-action. 

The enduring is merely the lasting (durer: to last [French]) through the trial, in the knowledge that it is but a tiny thing, compared with the joy of the reality that is set before us. When asked during World War II, at a time when sudden death was a constant reality, what he would think if he were to look up and see a bomb falling straight towards him, Lewis quickly replied: “Pooh! You're only a bomb!”.

Dying well is the net result of a life spent living well. If we can live life, facing its difficulties honestly, recognising that we live in a world tarnished by sin, but that in this world we also have Christian hope – that sure and certain expectation of resurrection and life everlasting in the presence of God himself – we can die well. 

We can be confident in the outcome, and calmly willing to endure our going hence. This is a knowing that has turned into true wisdom, the kind of wisdom that Lewis’s brother chose to write on his brother’s tombstone. It was a statement of confidence, not despair or melancholy. 

The etymology of confidencehelps us here: con:together; fide:faith. We share our faith together, both with those who depart and those who remain. Warnie shared with his brother, Jack, the absolute, rock-hard confidence that death was, despite its harshness and sadness, a stepping stone to the ultimate victory. It was to be endured, despite the tears, for the sake of the joy to come.

Our attitude, as Lewis’s and his brother’s was, is not one of resolute stoic indifference, but one of calm submission to a grievous parting. The parties involved will weep as humans must with genuine sorrow, but yet sing in the morning, with confidence, the certain hope born of the victory over death already won by our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Lovers of C. S. Lewis will recall the poem he wrote and which is printed at the great blue gates on Addison’s Walk in the grounds of Magdalen College:

WHAT THE BIRD SAID EARLY IN THE YEAR

I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time's nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick! - the gates are drawn apart.

References:

Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet.  New York: Macmillan, 1965.

McGrath, Alister. C. S. Lewis - a Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet.  Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013.

Footnotes:

[1]Alister McGrath, C. S. Lewis - a Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet(Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013), 360.

[2]C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet(New York: Macmillan, 1965), 139.

[3]1 John 4:18

[4]“… looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”Hebrew 12:2 (NRSV).