In the evening of November 22nd, 1963, C.S. Lewis sat down at his desk and answered fan mail. The last letter he wrote was to a boy named Philip, and my favorite bit of it is when he writes, “thank you for telling me that you like my books, a thing an author is always pleased to hear. It is a funny thing that all the children who have written to me see at once who Aslan is, and grown ups never do!” I love that Lewis always wrote with such respect and collegiality to children, and I also enjoy the real pleasure Lewis seemed to take in hearing that a kid liked his books.
The next morning, Lewis made his way out of this world and into the next. He was in his longtime home, in his bedroom. Kidney failure. Those close to him said that he had been cheerful, even peaceful about his eventual passing. He had briefly slipped into a coma a few months earlier, and had been almost disappointed to find himself back in this life. “Poor Lazarus!” he had written to his good friend Arthur Greeves. He spent what time remained writing letters, reading books (both new ones he wanted to finish, and old beloved ones). A week before he died he said to his brother, “Warnie, I have done all that I was sent into the world to do, and I am ready to go.”
