Canadians just are not as good as Americans when it comes to iconic days. Let’s be honest: Canada Day isn’t nearly as interesting as Independence Day, though we do have our quaint traditions in each hamlet, harbour, and neighbourhood. The American Civil War is one for history books, family legend, and blockbuster TV, while 10 to 1 odds it is unlikely the reader knows much about Canada’s founding moment, our Battle on the Plains of Abraham. From the landing of the Mayflower to 9/11, America sets its days in the hewn stones of history, while Canada plays YouTube reruns of Heritage Minutes, which are mostly cool things Canadians did without anyone knowing they were Canadian–and often before there was such a thing as “Canada.”
And some of them, we must admit, are lovely little stories about how we are not “Americans”:
The moment hit home for me on Aug 31, 1997, early in the morning on the East Coast. I can pinpoint where I was when I heard that Lady Diana died. It was a Sunday. I was on my way to my internship. I was driving down a side road of the little community as my new wife and I were preparing to move to the village the next day. I remember the announcer’s voice, the weather, and some sense of loss, even though I have little royal interest.
I sealed the memory within me in the way people sealed in Nov 22, 1963, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My memory of Lady Di’s crash is perhaps chiefly due to my grandfather’s wry sense of humour. On the eve of Diana’s epic, international funeral, Mother Teresa quietly passed away. Most people were focussed on things other than a nun in India. My grandfather, a man of select words, commented:
“It really is poor timing on her part,” he said.
“Abominable timing,” I said.
“If she’d have thought it through, she might have waited,” he said.
“A real mistake in marketing,” I said.
On Feb 17, 2011, my grandfather died. It was a Thursday.
I am far too young to know the JFK moment as all middle-aged Americans do. I think I remember the death of John Lennon, also an assassination. I don’t remember any details as a five-year-old boy, except a general sense of sadness in the house. Strawberry fields forever and the like. It was a Monday.
Though Canadians are lacking in the area of great days, I feel free to borrow UK and, especially, American iconic moments. I remember all the minutes of 9/11. It was a Tuesday. I was in rural Japan when I heard what had happened from our American landlords. My wife and I drove to the top of a mountain to get the English radio station from the American installation at the Yokota Air Base on the Kanto Plains. Then we mourned with the motley crew of ex-patriots under the weepy trees of Karuizawa. It was an international day of grieving, but it was an American day. Though we came from all parts of the world, on 9/11 we were all kind of American.
Then there was 12/22/63.
In my own life, besides 9/11 and that week in June 1989 when things went bad in Tiananmen Square, there are dates I will never forget: Thursday, April 16, 1987; Sunday, Feb 4, 1990; Monday, Jul 2, 1990; Monday, Jan 3, 1994; Friday, May 9, 1997; Thursday, Nov 25, 2004; Friday, Feb 1, 2008. They are mine, not the world’s. No children salute as the motorcade of my memory travels by.
Despite the impact of 9/11, which is shaping American culture and politics up to this very minute these decades later, the weight of American days in memory is still evident on Nov 22, 1963. The death of Kennedy, which keeps appearing in this reflection on C.S. Lewis’ death, continues to appear in American consciousness. When he died in Dallas, the news overwhelmed all other news throughout the world.
There were many things that happened that day. A police officer died with Kennedy, didn’t he? The Beatles released their second album. The political tides were shifting in Asia. Americans died in Vietnam as children there lost their homes. Many people in the world died that day, including Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World and dozens of other books. This was also the day that Wilhelm Beiglböck died comfortably in his home after having made a career out of doing live human tests on Jews in concentration camps as if they were lab rats, which in his mind they were.
Most eyes were turned away from his death. Perhaps that is best.
My grandfather quipped that Mother Teresa should have planned her death better. It doesn’t surprise me that she slipped away without much fanfare. She may not have thought she was worth the fuss anyway.
I suppose my grandfather would also have criticized C.S. Lewis for his inopportune death. If dying during the week of Lady Di’s memorial was bad, dying on the 1960s day of days for a leading country of the world is even worse. But that is what happened. On Nov 22, 1963, while Americans were glued to their television sets and radios, the news that C.S. Lewis died quietly in his bedroom slipped out into the world. Lewis had been recovering from an episode in the summer, but his health faded quickly in November. Lewis was one week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday when he died. It was a Friday, as today is a Friday.
Almost no one paid attention to the death of one of the most popular authors of a generation. This probably would not have fazed Lewis, though he may have found it disappointing that neither his brother Warren nor his close friend Tolkien attended his funeral. I am not sure he ever really had a true sense of his importance as an author. He knew he had an audience because he responded to the fan letters that poured in for years. But the popularity never truly settled within him. According to his stepson, Douglas Gresham, Lewis told his lawyer he didn’t need a literary estate since he would be forgotten in five years’ time. With book sales in the hundreds of millions—The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is steadily moving toward 100,000,000 copies alone—I would suggest Lewis underestimated his impact.
If Lewis was forgotten on the day he died, it is no longer the case 61 years later. 13 years ago, the semicentenary of Lewis’ passing became a year of jubilee. Beiglböck is mercifully forgotten. The Beatles are as important as ever, though I still miss John Lennon and they still aren’t as big as Jesus. Brave New World is a must-read, even if Aldous Huxley himself is obscured in time. 9/11 began a century—and marked the close of a century, I hope—though I’m not sure Tienanmen Square did either of these things. Mother Teresa was canonized and Lady Di’s children are always in the media. Doctor Who has nearly 700 episodes and is on its 15th Doctor, depending on how you count these things.
All calendar pages turn, and in the end, all days are just days. 61 years ago, C.S. Lewis finished his last day with tea. J.F.K.’s legacy is Cuba and Vietnam, Marilyn Monroe and the Moon, and the audacious idea that it was an American’s duty to serve, not to be served. Lewis’ legacy is far more modest: Oxford and Narnia, ink spots and tea stains, smoke rings and a few good words. I wonder, though, as we pass the few decades, if Lewis’ legacy may not continue to rise, while the days of America’s visionary martyr will prove to have been too short.
Perhaps JFK died too soon, or perhaps Lewis simply had more to say.
Only the Ancient of Days can know for certain. The voices of great men and almost all women have passed away, no doubt. All stone turns to sand, I suppose. But I have a feeling that C.S. Lewis’ words are engraved in our human experience. So, it is on this day that I think it is worth celebrating the artistic, literary, and spiritual legacy of C.S. Lewis. It is why I have dedicated years to helping American readers–and a few Canadians, Brits, and folks around the world, I suppose–see the transformative project that Lewis undertook.
A Pilgrim in Narnia 
Thank you for helping so many dig deeper with C.S. Lewis!
LikeLike
Thanks for this today, Brenton. I remember. I feel like Lewis’s impact extends to his influence on his friend JRR Tolkien’s master work as well. I am grateful every day for the worlds all three of those men, including Huxley, created with their imaginations . My mother remembers JFK’s assassination. I was only four months old.
LikeLike
One of the beautiful things about being a teacher and a writer is that the influence goes out beyond you much further than what you can see.
LikeLike
Thanks!
LikeLike
Warren and Tolkien didn’t go the the funeral?! Whyever not?
LikeLike
Warren was too overcome. Tolkien was out of touch but had a mass said for Lewis at his church.
LikeLike
Owen Barfield (his firm friend) made the funeral arrangements, Jeffrey Barfield (‘Dawn Treader’ dedicated to him) also attended – there is an account of a piano having to be brought in as CSL did not like organ music.
LikeLike
I love the piano story! I have a follow-up question for your other comment
LikeLike
Thanks, Brenton.
I was seven years old, in second grade. It was overcast in my town on the California coast. At lunch recess we noticed all the teachers were very upset about something, and when we returned to class we were told that the President had been killed, and that we were being excused for the rest of the day.
Yes, my family and I were “glued to the TV” through the funeral. I don’t think my parents were aware of Kennedy’s peccadillos, at least not then. They were amazed that a Catholic was elected President; my father was very afraid that Catholics would be persecuted if Kennedy won, and relieved that we weren’t. At age seven, I didn’t know about Lewis, even the Narnia books; didn’t discover him until college in the Jesus Movement years. What a rich treasure I found – broader and much deeper than any positive influence of the slain President who lived, I think, in his own kind of agony.
Dana
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing your story so elegantly, Dana.
LikeLike
You have undertaken and you have done well. A true steward and pilgrim yourself, Brenton.
Lewis is also my mentor in all things important in life. One day I hope to tell him so. He’ll probably laugh heartily and say all that doesn’t matter now, friend!
I’m already preparing my arguments.
It does matter. Good bless him. God bless you.
Lori.
LikeLike
Thank you so much for the encouragement, Lori! I do think your guess at his reaction would be pretty natural to him, but who knows what happens on the other side of the Veil? You could do what he did with George MacDonald and write him into one of your books!
LikeLike
Observances: “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” schoolchildren in England sing – the date when the Houses of Parliament barely escaped being destroyed, in the attempt io assassinate the new king, James I. The USA has its parallels — 9/11/01 when the White House was saved only by the self-sacrifice of hijacked passengers over the Pennsylvania hills, and 1/6/20 when the Capitol was vandalized (recall the etymology of that word). And now we have our own Fifth of November to remember, Election Day with its threats of destruction less violent but equally,, if not more, devastating.
Nov. 22, 1963 — “Where were you” when the report broke into radio and television broadcasts that “President Kennedy has been shot, and may live”? — soon updated with the news of his death. His legacy includes his courage in facing down the Soviet Union (the Bay of Pigs) and his vision for this country’s role in a peaceful world (the Peace Corps), But history takes unpredictable turns. It was left to his persuasive Texan successor LBJ to oversee the beginnings of civil tights legislation, and Johnson in turn, supporting a war against the influence of communism half the world away, had to give up his hopes for reelection.
Other news broke on Nov. 22, 1963: the death that morning of one of the Church’s great Doctors (‘Teachers’), C. S. Lewis. For that event it is also proper to mourn, and at the same time to celebrate “the artistic, literary, and spiritual legacy” that he gave us and continues to give, In addition, guided by many churches around the world in their calendars of holy men and holy women, we celebrate the anniversary of his entrance into that “larger life,’ from glory to glory advancing, of which he gives us such stirring visions – for many of us new and hard to grasp; for yes, he continues to teach us.
LikeLike
This is a gorgeous response with wise historical insight. It is hard not to draw parallels between Rome and the United States of America. On some days, I am glad that the Barbarian hordes always at and within our gates today represent the decay and destruction of culture–they vandalize neighbourliness, literacy, institutional values, Christ-like Christianity, moral courage, our connection to streams and farms and land, educational vision, and the like. Occasionally, though, I get tired of the long defeat.
LikeLike
I notice that you name one of CSL’s stepson but not his lawyer and literary trustee (along with Cecil Harwood) who was so significant for preserving and promoting CSL’s work (so that it would last more than five years) as it’s fundamental to building up the strength of knowledge to take on his own … Owen Barfield.
LikeLike
Hi Owen, thanks for the note. This is meant just to be a bit of a literary salute not a historical note, but after we talked a couple years ago about your grandfather’s work, I did create the structures of a significant Owen Bearfield post. But it happened in that season when I was simply unable to continue doing all the things, and writing just was not possible. I’m still struggling to even post announcements, but I’m starting to be able to respond on social media.
LikeLike
But my question for you is about that relationship between your grandfather and CS Lewis. Owen Barfield was his lawyer and literary trustee and close friend. I remember reading in one of Barfield’s essays about how Lewis clearly didn’t understand his literary legacy or what the potential was for its development. Did your grandfather try to give him a vision of what his literary afterlife could look like? Even if Lewis and Narnia faded from you, there would have been a decade or two of serious work to do on an author with 40 books published in the previous. Barfield knew more than Lewis about what revenue actually came in on his fiction, and I presume that includes Narnia. I’m curious if your grandfather tried to nudge Lewis to take it a bit more seriously or if this was always a kind of foggy blank space in CS Lewis’s peripheral vision of the future?
LikeLike