Poets help us grieve
I feel fairly certain I have included this poem in a Poemapalooza of past years. Perhaps with this very picture, which I love so.
No matter how many times I read this poem, I feel a lurching forward as I recognize–yet once more–the ways in which objects are imbued with meaning. Memory is a verb, it turns out.
The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., is often adorned with small objects, gifts left behind for loved ones whose names are on the Wall. Warehouses are now full with the objects that have been left behind there. And as we walk down into the Wall, we often don’t know the significance of the objects there—a small, worn Teddy Bear, a watch, a photograph—but we know they are imbued with great meaning, an expression of relationship and of deepest loss.
So, too, with the things of our lives. Often when someone dies, we are faced with boxes of their things, things that had great meaning to them, but whose meaning is not passed along. That ring was the first piece of jewelry she ever bought herself, after escaping a difficult relationship. That small wooden clog was given to her by an exchange student from Holland after they went to the prom together. That beaded frame that is falling apart was what she had left from her grandmother's house. That frame is made from wood Grandpa fashioned into a small workshed.
The things we leave behind (much like Tim O’Brien’s brilliant memoir from Vietnam, The Things They Carried) tell the story of our lives in remarkable ways, ways we cannot know. You would be surprised what is precious to those around you. It's often not the jewels, but the set of measuring spoons from a childhood.
Poets help us grieve, giving voice to the ways in which that gravy boat contains a whole life. For me, it was a luggage tag written in my father's hand. What is your gravy boat? Your luggage tag? For whom does it make you grieve as you never had before?
What Came to Me
-Jane Kenyon
I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.
