Here’s something truly astonishing: I recently found out that Emily Dickinson inserted the same lines over and over into a variety of poems that she sent as condolence letters to grieving family or friends. Almost like a form letter – a core message about the unknowability of death and what follows included in words addressing the particulars of each loss.

I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that I’d write the same thing to mourners I love, or am friends with. Which, in this year of manifold losses, has been particularly true. Each case so different, hitting home, sometimes intensely, sometimes less so, with different feelings and reactions. Each requiring a specific reply that honors them, not my own concerns, as I suspect the poet did.

Maybe those short lines were really meant as reminders for herself, incantations to ward off the emptiness or fear elicited by yet another death in her vicinity. In a letter to Charles Clark after the death of Charles Wadsworth (1883), she put those 5 lines (bolded below by me) at the end of the poem. Not exactly words of condolence. More a quest for what will be, acknowledging we’ll never know it. Can’t peek behind that gate, until you’ve passed through it. But could be something good waiting for you…

Maybe her world was used to Dickinson’s style of writing, able to decipher all these complicated words and hidden meanings. I am reduced to a simpler approach: my heart goes out to yet another friend enduring the loss of a child, another senseless death of one too young. My thoughts go out to those mourning the victims of war in Gaza, Ukraine, countless African nations, the dead of climate catastrophes in Nepal, earthquakes in South America, the fires and floods unleashed onto this planet by our carbon emissions. The next catastrophe around the corner at this very moment.

Senseless deaths breaking the fabric of time. A hoped for future lost, thoughts confined to revisiting the past, over and over, memory all that’s left.

"These thoughts disquiet me, and the great friend is gone, who could solace them—Do they disturb you?"

  The Spirit lasts—but in what mode—
  Below, the Body speaks,
  But as the Spirit furnishes—
  Apart, it never talks—
  The Music in the Violin
  Does not emerge alone
  But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch
  Alone—is not a Tune—
  The Spirit lurks within the Flesh
  Like Tides within the Sea
  That makes the Water live, estranged
  What would the Either be?
  Does that know—now—or does it cease—
  That which to this is done,
  Resuming at a mutual date
  With every future one?
  Instinct pursues the Adamant,
  Exacting this Reply,
  Adversity if it may be, or wild Prosperity,
  The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight
  Before my Mind was sown,
  Not even a Prognosticator's Push
  Could make a Dent thereon— 

Emily Dickinson