TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, whose difficulties with her daughter and son-in-law continued: On the experience of forgiving; and on the tedium of dying.
6 July 1963
(All () one can say about Lorraine] is that if she is really so brainwashed /as you think,
she is then no more morally responsible than a lunatic.
I fully admit that as regards her husband you have been set /as difficult a job in the forgiving line
/as can well be imagined.
Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster //who so darkened
my childhood.
I’d been trying to do it for years:
and like you, each time I thought () I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted /over again.
But this time I feel sure () it is the real thing.
And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment () it does happen
it seems so easy and you wonder [why on earth you didn’t do it years ago].
So the parable of the unjust judge comes true,
and [what has been vainly asked for years] can suddenly be granted.
I also get a quite new feeling about ‘If you forgive you will be forgiven.’
I don’t believe () it is, as it sounds, a bargain.
The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the very same thing.
But one is safe /as long as one keeps on trying.
How terribly long these days and hours are for you.
Even I, who am in a bed of roses now /compared with you, feel it a bit.
I live in almost total solitude, never properly asleep by night (all loathsome dreams) and constantly falling asleep by day.
I sometimes feel /as if my mind were decaying.
Yet, in another mood, how short our whole past life begins to seem!
It is a pouring wet summer here, and cold. I can hardly remember /when we last saw the sun.
Well, we shall get /out of it all sooner or later, for even the weariest river Winds /somewhere safe to sea.
Let us pray much for one another.
From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack