On Death and Dickinson
I didn’t cry when Alex Taylor died. Everyone else did. Every other girl in my choir was holding onto each other and trying desperately not to fall to pieces during the Magnificat. He had been a longtime chorister and friend to many — everyone appreciated his enthusiasm, despite the alienating nature of the wheelchair to which he had been confined coupled with his shy personality. I had never really spoken to him (I suspected many of the others hadn’t either), but I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame for my emotional removal from the proceedings. I approached the service in a cold, professional manner: warm up, vest, sing, sit, change into street clothes again. Nowhere did feeling enter the equation. I had a friend who cried every time she sang a funeral service, no matter whether she had been acquainted with the deceased or not, but I operated differently.
It’s not that I don’t know how to feel, and it’s not that I don’t know what it is to lose something or someone. I’ve left many pieces behind me in the bit of time I’ve spent on this planet: broken friendships, portions of my heart I never recovered, memories that would remain just that forever. But I can only properly mourn something that was once full of life for me.
In her poem “The Bustle in a House”, Emily Dickinson examines the human instinct to attempt to compensate for such a loss:
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth –
The sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.
Death leaves a hole. It means that there was a person who once existed and breathed and shouted on this planet, and they cannot anymore. In this poem, Dickinson examines one of the various strategies mourners use to try to fill the raw emptiness: bustling (an onomatopoeic word – it rings of bitter and forced business). Just as tears excite emotions that create a feeling of vitality magnified, post-death bustling from one menial task to the next makes the mourner’s immediate surroundings seem more bearable. Dickinson implies both literal and metaphorical bustling: sweeping up, putting away, making the home presentable for funeral guests are all crucial tasks the morning after a death. But in doing so, the grieving parties also seal parts of themselves off so the raw edges of the loss aren’t quite so painful – pieces of their hearts in particular.
The matter-of-fact tone Dickinson uses to lay out the contents of the poem emphasizes its underlying meaning. The inhabitants of the household bustle around in a desperate attempt to cling to life and normality despite the coldness and surrealism of the situation. She narrates the process in a restrained manner, juxtaposing the trivial and extraordinary: sweeping against eternity, daily chores against love. Even the word “morning” is a mixture of the concepts in itself. The “morning/mourning” pun it offers to readers superimposes the idea of one of the most significant aspects of humanity on top of an everyday occurrence.
The idea I struggled the most with in interpreting this poem was that suggested by the very last word. What does “Eternity” mean, anyway? The likeliest explanation seems to be the afterlife, wherever that might be – when we join the deceased. But it could also be a hint that no matter how hard we try to keep a firm hold on our hearts, they cannot be sealed off for good. We enter the world with beating hearts, and no matter how much trauma they undergo, they must continue to function throughout all circumstances. If they don’t, we quite literally cease to be alive. Thus, despite the fact that we try to close our hearts to love in order to avoid further pain, we can never be quite as powerful as we think we are. Even bruised hearts remain in use forever – until Eternity.
In her poem “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”, Dickinson analyzes the root of the actions she observes in “The Bustle in a House”:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
A Wooden way
Regardless grown
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
This is not the day-after compilation of forced vitalities (tears, chores, shared physical grief); this is the day-after-day-after (and so on) day, when the mourner is finally forced to look pain in the eye. The reflection of pain is so overwhelming that it often leaves its subject in the numb state depicted in the poem. Instead of desperately requiring life, the grieving one separates himself from it entirely, approaching tasks in mechanical bursts and feeling fixed in a frozen state.
The tone of this poem feels slightly more frantic than that of the other poem. Dickinson’s excessive usage of hyphens belies her otherwise calm diction. The words are heavy and stagnant (what could be more of a burden than mere contentment wrapped in Quartz – except maybe time measured in Lead?), but the poem reads like someone gasping for breath. The hyphenated ending also makes it feel ragged and unfinished, like an expression of a lost soul.
I love Dickinson. She manages to issue words that seem at once ordinary and monumental; indeed, in essence, that’s what Death is. People die every day. Humanity has known an infinite amount of loss. And yet it continues to be too overwhelming a concept for those remaining on earth to fully grasp.
I was removed from the events of Alex Taylor’s memorial weekend. He had touched my life briefly, but his absence didn’t leave a hole I didn’t know how to handle in terms of the way I ordinarily lived my life. Instead, I helped to contribute something to the magnified version of life those mourning him required that day: music. I held my friends’ hands as they cried and sang the soprano descant with everything I had for the people who did need it. And so, three years later, I’ve forgiven myself.
