In memory that which once existed only as possibility is frozen. It becomes a joy or a burden, or, more often, a bit of both. What it is not any longer is possibility. All that remains to you is to, somehow, reconcile yourself to that which has gone beyond the possibility of change. Something like this was the point that Sheldon Vanauken was making when he said in a letter to C. S. Lewis, written after his wife Davy's early death, that "the manuscript of our love has gone safe to the printer." With Davy's death, the possibilities that existed for their life together came to an end. That was a pain, of course, for what was lost, but it also meant that the memory of it in its fulness now existed in a kind of safety, beyond the ability of either of them to mar.
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Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
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