On facing a possibly terminal illness
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, JUNE 17, 1963
Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hair-shirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of? You have long attempted (and none of us does more) a Christian life. Your sins are confessed and absolved. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
Remember, tho’ we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round—we get afraid because we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don’t you think Our Lord says to you “Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?”
Of course this may not be the end. Then make it a good rehearsal.
Yours (and like you a tired traveler, near the journey’s end) *
*Lewis died about five months after this letter was written. The correspondent lived another 12 years.
Coping with physical and mental decline
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, JUNE 28, 1963
I think the best way to cope with the mental debility and total inertia is to submit to it entirely. Don’t try to concentrate. Pretend you are a dormouse or even a turnip. But of course I know the acceptance of inertia is much easier for men than for women. We are the lazy sex. Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming. It is nearer now than when I began this letter.
The “solemn fun” of nearing the end
TO SISTER PENELOPE, SEPTEMBER 17, 1963
I was unexpectedly revived from a long coma—and perhaps the almost continuous prayers of my friends did it—but it would have been a luxuriously easy passage and one almost (but nella sua voluntade e nostra pace*) regrets having the door shut in one’s face. Ought we to honor Lazarus rather than Stephen as the protomartyr? To be brought back and have all one’s dying to do again was rather hard.
If you die first, and if “prison visiting” is allowed, come down and look me up in Purgatory.
It is all rather fun—solemn fun—isn’t it? **
*“in His will is our peace”
**C. S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963.
Excerpted from Letters on Living the Faith by C. S. Lewis and reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.
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