First Paragraph:
He never knew it would feel like this. She had entered his life, transformed his world, opened his body and mind. Yet, throughout it all, he had told himself that his devotion to her did not compromise his devotion to God. “I had warned myself,” he recalls, “not to reckon on worldly happiness.” But it turns out that this is precisely what he did. He loved her, and because he loved her he is shattered by her death. For days and nights, he records “the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in-tears.”
—Martin Hägglund. “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.”
The “he” referenced in this paragraph, is C.S. Lewis, writing about mourning his wife.