grrlTravels

My Thoughts are Consumed

When I was in college I had a particular attachment to the poem by Dylan Thomas Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. I particularly liked the following lines, which seemed moving and loving and strong and powerful in just the right way:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I liked the sense of power that was given to the dying father, with the rage and ferocity. I liked the thought of raging against death, of defying it.

When I think of it, I had an affection for lots of poetry which dealt with death. For example, I loved A.E. Housman's To An Athlete Dying Young. The poem seemed so bittersweet, so sad and yet so fitting and appropriate:

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

And the following lines from Emily Dickinson seemed so calm and measured, so pleasant and peaceful:

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

I trusted the poets in those days, trusted their insights and their beautiful words and the lovely images their poems evoked.

And now my sweet mother is close to death. And it is not the beautiful death of the poets, but a slow agonizing death, a death where cancer chokes her, stealing her breath, shrinking her stature, paralyzing her. It is not calm, it is not peaceful, it is not beautiful or glorious or fitting. And there is no rage or ferocity to be had, no fighting the inevitable.

It is simply terrible.

There are some small comforts to be found, from other who have suffered the same losses, from loving friends, from scripture, from my belief system. It helps to know that life will go on, like it or not. It helps to have K. and E., and the promise of good days ahead. It helps to sit and gaze out on the water and feel the peace that comes from beauty and nature.

But comfort does not come from the poets and their stylized views of death, as I once mistakenly believed it might. All I hear now, as we wait for the end, longing for it and dreading it at the same time, are the words of T. S. Eliot, repeated over and over in my head:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted by grrlTravels at September 15, 2004 4:11 PM