Remembering C. S. Lewis

Most of us old enough to remember can recall exactly where we were on November 22, 1963, and the moment we learned President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas shortly past noon. What many, including friends and colleagues, wouldn't learn until after his funeral was that C.S. Lewis had passed away an hour before at his home in the Kilns near Headington Quarry, Oxford. Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, has related that, given the significance of the news surrounding the death of the President, only two journalists posted stories related to Lewis’s passing including one from the Oxford Mail.

Upon Lewis’s death, his brother Warnie began drinking and remained in bed for days, failing to share details regarding the funeral arrangements. Partly as a result, only 30 people attended Lewis’s funeral held at Holy Trinity Church less than a mile from his home. The group included estranged friend J.R.R. Tolkien, a few members of The Inklings, Lewis’s stepsons, and a scattering of others. The inscription on the gravestone – ‘Men must endure their going hence’ – is from a Shakespearean calendar page for the day Lewis’s mother died which their father had kept the rest of his life.