by Giovanni Cucci

Here we have reached the conclusion of our reading of Diary of a pain by Lewis. At the beginning of the fourth chapter he writes: «This is the fourth empty notebook that I have found in the house. I have decided that this will be the limit of my annotations. I don't intend to buy notebooks on purpose. As a barrier to total collapse, as a safety valve, this news story has been of some help.

As for the other end I had in mind, I discovered that it rested on a misunderstanding. I had thought I could describe a state, make a map of affliction. Instead I discovered that grief is not a state, but a process. She doesn't need a map but a story, and if I don't stop writing this story at some completely arbitrary point, I don't see why I should ever stop."

The termination of the work of mourning, as noted, is a decision of the will, which arises from the acceptance of the limit and puts an end to the narrative: in this case not having other notebooks available. It is not knowledge that helps him live again, but a decision: the good must be wanted. Conversely, it leaves you powerless. This is what also happens in the therapeutic context, where it is not possible to involve the patient's freedom of decision: it has been said that knowledge is not the cause but the effect of the healing process. As E. Bloch noted regarding guilt, which can only be recognized when one distances oneself from it. Reading it differently.

The mourning process allows Lewis to evaluate what happened differently: the pain translates into an unexpected surprise, a joy unknown until now. He calls the joy he experienced before meeting Helen "tasteless", a joy he had not known, the pain of loss and separation. Now he can leave more space for the One who was at the origin of every gift and who, without taking away the mystery of the loss, leaves him a strange peace, because he is no longer worried about himself: «These notes talk about me, about Helen and of God. In that order. The order and proportions are the exact opposite of what they should have been. And I see that at no point did it occur to me to address one or the other with that mode of thought that we call praise. Yet it would have been, for me, the best thing. Praise is the way of love which always has an element of joy in it. Praise in the right order: of Him as her giver, of her as her gift. Do we not perhaps enjoy a little, in praising, what we praise, even if we are far from it? Because this is one of the miracles of love: that it gives - to both, but perhaps above all to the woman - the ability to see beyond her enchantments, but without the enchantment disappearing."

Mourning can only be processed starting from a certainty

The Diary of a Pain summarizes the path of mourning in a touching and ingenious way, a path that Lewis manages to complete alone. He can implement it thanks to the help of writing, of which this text offers a wonderful example of its therapeutic and healing value. But this undertaking is always accompanied by a certainty, revised, contested and finally rediscovered, which inspired his pages: «Lewis would not even have started writing his notebooks if he had not believed from the first moment that doing so was a way of pay homage to his deceased wife, and precisely through praise, however unconscious. That he started writing – thus also starting to process his own mourning – says both that the loss in question was real for him and that it was possible for him to process it. However, there are people who cannot grieve because for them there is no point of certainty" (E. Perrella).

Lewis has a certainty to work towards. For him, showing solidarity with the pain of others was the turning point in the mourning process, and it helps him face his own death. It is a great teaching, even in therapeutic terms. The already mentioned Yalom, retracing the many and varied events encountered, noted how the brevity of the time available and the exercise of one's power for good, when they are consciously undertaken, strengthen the person's life potential, consequently also changing the attitude towards death: «My experience, both professional and personal, has led me to believe that the fear of death is always stronger in those who have the feeling of not having lived fully. A good interpretative parameter could be the following: the poorer the life, or the more wasted its potential, the stronger the death anxiety will be."

It is the last element of the paradox: death as an invitation to live fully.