And then one or other dies (death). And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career - something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape.

It (death of beloved) follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.

Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow, or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.

A grief observed - CS lewis, pg 678