By Hannah Webb | Focus Editor & Copy Editor
When grief first arrives, it starts like a storm, raging with thunder and lightning. But when the initial shock wears off, it turns quiet, heavy and stubborn, until the air itself feels foggy. There’s so much confusion — what to say, what to do, what to pray. Your soul’s compass spins loose, its needle pointing nowhere.
And yet, outside that fog and disorder, campus carries on. Fountain Mall bubbles in cheerful defiance. Bulletin boards shout about events. Classmates laugh while professors wait for essays as though life hadn’t fractured. The contrast is almost cruel: the throbbing of absence against the bright insistence of presence.
C.S. Lewis, in “A Grief Observed,” recognized this dissonance. After the loss of his wife, he wrote, “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” But for a grieving student, that valley doesn’t unfold in solitude. It winds through crowded lecture halls, fluorescent-lit study rooms and pre-class conversations. The new landscapes grief reveals are not pastoral — they are jarring and public, an ache carried in places where everyone seems uncomfortably unaffected.
College runs on a clock. Grief does not. It is on its own stubborn and tedious schedule, looping back when you least expect it. One day, you manage to laugh with a friend, and it seems like you’re “moving on.” Then, you’re breaking down because you hate the idea of “moving on.”
Lewis describes this cycle with piercing accuracy: “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.” We cannot place a deadline on grief, no matter how much we — or those around us — want it to. Even when you believe there’s progress, grief loves to ambush you, showing up in the most ordinary places.
College and life demand progress, but grief loops back, tugging you into places you thought you already survived. The assignments won’t wait, but grief cannot be rushed. Living in both timelines is exhausting.
Lewis writes, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” It is the kind of fear that makes the world unfamiliar. Sitting among a hundred classmates, it feels like you slipped into another dimension where absence is louder than presence. Everyone seems to know their part in the script, yet you can’t remember your lines.
Peers often don’t know what to say. Some offer kind but clumsy words; others say nothing at all. Their silence is not usually cruelty but inexperience. And yet, even in the disorientation, anchors emerge.
Lewis admits, “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” Absence colors each moment, but so does presence; small consistencies become handholds in the fog. The “let me know if you need anything” texts seem overwhelming and forced, but there are people who answer calls at 2 a.m. when you’re confused and hurting.
They do not cure grief, but they tether you when you feel you might drift away. Life insists on pressing forward, yet support offers a strange mercy. Nothing can erase loss, but this can keep you moving when you don’t have the strength to.
The hardest lesson may be permitting yourself to grieve in a place that constantly tells you to achieve. Grief does not fit neatly between midterms and extracurriculars — it interrupts, blurs, breaks schedules and disrupts productivity.
Lewis writes, “You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.” And yet scripture reminds us that blurred vision is not wasted: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). To mourn is not to fail at life’s demands, but to live honestly in a broken world. Tears are not an obstacle to faith, but part of how we encounter God’s nearness in suffering.
Grieving students need the courage to let their eyes blur. To step outside the library when tears come. To ask professors for grace when deadlines are impossible. To remember that mourning is not weakness but love written in another language.
What grief asks of community is not answers but presence: a friend who sits in silence, a professor who extends grace, a peer who checks in. Lewis noted that grief makes the world feel alien, but companionship can help regain its familiarity.
In turn, grief asks something of us: compassion. Notice the classmates who seem withdrawn; offer gentleness instead of judgment; acknowledge that the energy of campus always hides quieter sorrows beneath. In a world obsessed with success, compassion is an admission that we are not machines of productivity, but fragile beings who love and break deeply.
Lewis saw grief, as searing as it is, as the cost of love. For students in this valley, the task isn’t to outrun sorrow but to carry it, trusting it is not a detour but part of the path.
The truth is, grief will never meet the deadlines we attempt to give it. It’ll return when it wants, reminding us love does not vanish on schedule either. The loss depletes you, but love and memories replenish. And in love, Christians can trust that “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
Letter from the editors: If you are struggling with grief, many resources are available to you. The Baylor Counseling Center is open to all Baylor students. Appointments can be made on their website. The Office of Spiritual Life can provide care as well. The Mental Health Hotline website offers multiple numbers for varying situations.
