You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

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And then, of her, and of every created thing I praise, I should say ‘In some way, in its unique way, like Him who made it’.

Thus up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. To the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful.

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Once very near the end I said, ‘ If you can – if it is allowed – come to me when I too am on my death bed.’ ‘Allowed!’ she said. ‘Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I’d break it into bits.’ She knew she was speaking a kind of mythological language, with even an element of comedy in it. There was a twinkle as well as a tear in her eye. But there was no myth and no joke about the will, deeper than any feeling, that flashed through her.

- A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis