20/10/2021
《卿卿如晤 A Grief Observed》是魯易斯 （C. S. Lewis）痛失愛妻之後，寫的一篇悼亡手記。
在“撕心裂肺、肝腸寸斷的午夜”裡，他寫的每一個字都反映了他失去至愛後內心無比的痛。
和大家分享《卿卿如晤》第四章內的一段。那一段揭示了魯易斯再也不能回憶過去；從過去回到現在，至愛已不在，再一次失去的痛苦難以承受，故不堪回首。
「這一回，大自然的風光明媚依舊，世界也不再像一條鄙陋的大街，如我幾天前所怨對的。相反的，每一處地平線、每一座農莊、或每一簇樹色，都向我招手，想把我喚回一種過往的喜樂裏，那在 伊未出現之前我已享受到的喜樂。然而，這樣的邀約卻讓我毛骨悚然。它所邀請我進人的喜樂是種索然無味的喜樂。我發覺自己根本不想回頭沉緬於那種方式的喜樂。一想到竟然可能回到原來的光景，我不覺害怕起來，因為這種結局，在我看來，只是最糟糕的。在這樣的景況中，過去幾年的愛情和婚姻，一經回顧，彷怫只是一段迷人的插曲，像一段假期——短暫地介人我不斷往前的人生，過後，又讓我恢復原狀，與昔日沒有兩樣。這段戀情於是乎變得好像不是真的——與我的過去格格不人，使我幾乎相信它是發生在別人身上，根本與我無關。果真如此，對我而言， 伊在我的生命裡等於又死了一次；比第一次更讓我難捨。什麼都行，就是不容許這樣的事發生。
你可知道，卿卿，當你離去時，帶走了多少東西？你甚至剝奪了我的過去，我倆從未分享過的東西。我錯了，竟然說殘肢可以從被切除的疼痛中復原。我之所以被騙，是因為它使盡了各樣伎倆傷害我，我最多只能逐一地識破。」
"Today I have been revisiting old haunts, taking one of the long rambles that made me so happy in my bachelor days. And this time the face of nature was not emptied of its beauty and the world didn’t look (as I complained some days ago) like a mean street. On the contrary, every horizon, every stile or clump of trees, summoned me into a past kind of happiness, my pre-H. happiness. But the invitation seemed to me horrible. The happiness into which it invited me was insipid. I find that I don’t want to go back again and be happy in that way. It frightens me to think that a mere going back should even be possible. For this fate would seem to me the worst of all, to reach a state in which my years of love and marriage should appear in retrospect a charming episode—like a holiday—that had briefly interrupted my interminable life and returned me to normal, unchanged. And then it would come to seem unreal—something so foreign to the usual texture of my history that I could almost believe it had happened to someone else. Thus H. would die to me a second time; a worse bereavement than the first. Anything but that.
Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared. I was wrong to say the stump was recovering from the pain of the amputation. I was deceived because it has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one.”
