"Parting is such sweet sorrow . . . "

When I picked up Emily Dickinson's Selected Poems, I was not aware of how her writing would connect so closely to my life.  Some have called her "the poet of death," but I would say her writing is life-giving as well.  Dickenson's poems describe the events, thoughts, and feelings of loss so precisely, they resonate with my own experience.  Surprisingly, I found her perspective in these poems comforting.

In the poem Parting, Dickinson talks about events in her life that have caused such severe anguish, she feels as if she has died:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell. 

Dickinson's reference to heaven and hell at the end of this poem intrigued me.  The phrase, Parting is all we know of heaven, was easy to understand.  As I have learned, being separated by death from someone you love makes Heaven more real.  However, the phrase: And all we need of hell, was harder to decipher.  English professor Lilia Melani at Brooklyn College offers this explanation: "The last two lines of this poem present a powerful paradox; parting is both heaven and hell. We part with those who die and--hopefully--go to heaven, which is, ironically, an eternal happiness for them; however, we who are left behind suffer the pain (hell) of their deaths (parting)."

The painful suffering that death brings to the family is perfectly depicted in this next poem.  Here, Dickinson describes the day after the death of a loved one and the feeling of broken hearts:

The bustle is 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.

In another poem, Dickinson portrays the shock felt by all in the neighborhood:

There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.

The neighbors rustle in and out, . . .
The children hurry by; . . .
The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his, . . .

In Memorials, Dickinson describes how death causes us to slow down and reflect on what is important.  When a "perished creature" dies, we have the opportunity to honor a life and to remember:

Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until

The thimble wade too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

Again, the death of a loved one makes heaven more of a reality, which Dickinson beautifully portrays in this next poem:

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

In the poem Retrospect, Dickinson illustrates the heartbreaking thoughts of a person who has died.  She imagines the places and things that are dear to her and wonders if her family will miss her at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  In the final stanza, she is overwhelmed by grief and decides to focus on the day when her loved ones will join her in heaven:

But this sort grieved myself,
And so I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.

To be sure, the experience of profound loss brings unfathomable pain.  Some people say, "It is a wound that never heals."  In her poem, The Mystery of Pain, Dickinson puts it this way:

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

Finally, in the poem Griefs, Dickinson compares the weight of her own grief to the grief that others bear.  She wonders: "if it hurts to live, and if they have to try, and whether, could they choose between, they would not rather die."  Dickinson then ponders the different kinds of grief and concludes:

And though I may not quess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those who stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own. 

My thoughts focus on Christ: "A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."