The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Page B

there—mothers who have their sons with them, in Hell? Does their love make them happy?’
    â€˜If you mean people like the Guthrie woman and her dreadful Bobby, of course not. I hope you’re not suggesting…If I had Michael I’d be perfectly happy, even in that town. I wouldn’t be always talking about him till everyone hated the sound of his name, which is what Winifred Guthrie does about her brat. I wouldn’t quarrel with people for not taking enough notice of him and then be furiously jealous if they did. I wouldn’t go about whining and complaining that he wasn’t nice to me. Because, of course, he would be nice. Don’t you dare to suggest that Michael could ever become like the Guthrie boy. There are some things I won’t stand.’
    â€˜What you have seen in the Guthries is what natural affection turns to in the end if it will not be converted.’
    â€˜It’s a lie. A wicked, cruel lie. How could anyone love their son more than I did? Haven’t I lived only for his memory all these years?’
    â€˜That was rather a mistake, Pam. In your heart of hearts you know it was.’
    â€˜What was a mistake?’
    â€˜All that ten years’ ritual of grief. Keeping his room exactly as he’d left it; keeping anniversaries; refusing toleave that house though Dick and Muriel were both wretched there.’
    â€˜Of course they didn’t care. I know that. I soon learned to expect no real sympathy from them.’
    â€˜You’re wrong. No man ever felt his son’s death more than Dick. Not many girls loved their brothers better than Muriel. It wasn’t against Michael they revolted: it was against you—against having their whole life dominated by the tyranny of the past: and not really even Michael’s past, but your past.’
    â€˜You are heartless. Everyone is heartless. The past was all I had.’
    â€˜It was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian—like embalming a dead body.’
    â€˜Oh, of course. I’m wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.’
    â€˜But of course!’ said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. ‘That’s what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.’
    â€˜How dare you laugh about it? Give me my boy. Do you hear? I don’t care about all your rules and regulations. I don’tbelieve in a God who keeps mother and son apart. I believe in a God of love. No one had a right to come between me and my son. Not even God. Tell Him that to His face. I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.’
    â€˜He will be, Pam. Everything will be yours. God Himself will be yours. But not that way. Nothing can be yours by nature.’
    â€˜What? Not my own son, born out of my own body?’
    â€˜And where is your own body now? Didn’t you know that Nature draws to an end? Look! The sun is coming, over the mountains there: it will be up any moment now.’
    â€˜Michael is mine.’
    â€˜How yours? You didn’t make him. Nature made him to grow in your body without your will. Even against your will…you sometimes forget that you didn’t intend to have a baby then at all. Michael was originally an Accident.’
    â€˜Who told you that?’ said the Ghost: and then, recovering itself, ‘It’s a lie. It’s not true. And it’s no business of yours. I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of Love.’
    â€˜And yet, Pam, you have no love at this moment for your own mother or for me.’
    â€˜Oh, I see! That’s the trouble, is it? Really, Reginald! The idea of your being hurt because…’
    â€˜Lord love