Sad goodbye

My weekend took a rather tragic turn. The beautiful stray cat we took in last May to be my daughter's kitty passed away.

We learned last summer that Rosie had feline leukemia and we watched her go through successive bouts of anemia, appetite loss, poor grooming, UTIs and respiratory infections over and over and over. My daughter adored her and loved to hug, snuggle and brush her. Despite all the sickness, Rosie had a very sweet and loving disposition.

On Sunday, Rosie's milder illnesses took a sudden turn for the worse. She couldn't stand, wouldn't drink. Her breathing was labored and her heart rate slow, so we took her to a university veterinary hospital--the only place open on a holiday. After the vets confirmed she was in late stages of the disease, we sat by petting her as the doctor sent her to eternal rest.

At times like these, I find great comfort in poetry that addresses these tough places of loss. Below are some contemporary poems by four gifted, living poets that look at themes of death, loss and grieving.

I imagine for some of you readers, your initial reaction is to now click away rather than read on. Our culture seems to want to wall away sadness, to deny it. I challenge you to read on.

Note that the in two middle poems, the title also functions as the first line.

Before
by Carl Adamshick

I always thought death would be like traveling
in a car, moving through the desert,
the earth a little darker than sky at the horizon,
that your life would settle like the end of a day
and you would think of everyone you ever met,
that you would be the invisible passenger,
quiet in the car, moving through the night,
forever, with the beautiful thought of home.

Sick to death of the hardpan shoulder,
By Greg Glazner

the froth of noise
the undersides of the cedars make,

the windblown dark that hints
and fails for hours at effacement—
maybe I could claim it isn’t

praying, but it’s asking,
at the least, begging
that these lungfuls of this blackness

eat whatever keeps on swelling
and collapsing in my chest, and be done
with it, no more noise

left hanging in the spaces
between brake lights than a smothered rush
that sounds like suffering

and is nothing. Instead a sobbing isn’t
so much easing from my throat
as shining like black light from my torso,

veining the leaves of weeds, stoning
the whole roadside in a halo—I can feel
the heat of truck lights on my back,

I’m inside that brilliant gravity,
I think of time, I’m in the driver’s
nightmare and it shudders by—


I Can Afford Neither the Rain
by Holly Iglesias

Nor the strip of light between the slats, the window itself blind with grief. Nor the bench where the last mourner lingers, the others on to the next thing, leaning into the bar, toasting the sweethearts, gone and gone, their passion and ire softening now into the earth. Nor the bluff above the Mississippi where centuries of war dead rest, where the stone stands bearing their names, the wind of romance hard against it.


Curtains
by Ruth Stone

Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
Now cold borscht alone in a bare kitchen.

What does it mean if I say this years later?

Listen, last night
I am on a crying jag
with my landlord, Mr. Tempesta.
I sneaked in two cats.
He screams, "No pets! No pets!"
I become my Aunt Virginia,
proud but weak in the head.
I remember Anna Magnani.
I throw a few books. I shout.
He wipes his eyes and opens his hands.
OK OK keep the dirty animals
but no nails in the walls.
We cry together.
I am so nervous, he says.

I want to dig you up and say, look,
it's like the time, remember,
when I ran into our living room naked
to get rid of that fire inspector.

See what you miss by being dead?


Do you tend to run from sad things, to avoid those who are mourning? What things have helped you through a loss?

Categories: grief, National Poetry Month, pets, poetry