Grief and Loss

His brother gets sick and he closes school early because he can't do it all by himself. Thoreau lives with Emerson and writes poems and then goes off to Boston to read more poems to learn the craft of poetry, but he doesn't really like the poems and comes back to Concord. Margaret Fuller gives him some editorial feedback that he's not there yet. The time between the boat trip and his brother's death is a time of floundering and trying things for Thoreau. 

In the end it would Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman who were the great poets of the time. William Ellery Channing and Jones Very would be the lesser poets. Emerson and Thoreau would use poetry, but they were not great poets, you read their poems as a kind of way to triangulate their thinking.

I collect the names of my high school classmates who have passed away since we graduated in 1985. I have a folder of bookmarks for the obituaries of their parents. My best friend from that time, and others I knew less in class of 500 have passed. 

Perhaps a biggest loss of Thoreau was the death of his brother from cutting his finger shaving in 1842. 

The loss of my grandfather was a big loss to me, a dark cloud hung over me for a year. I feel like the mortality rate was younger, and people didn't live as long, they could be taken quite easily in Thoreau's time. Today John Thoreau's lockjaw would be cured by antibiotics. Those tetanus shots we get prevent lockjaw now. 

My other grandfather got dementia and was gone but present for a while, so I had a kind of rolling mourning, he was gone but still there. The very serious minister became playful and light. He quit playing scrabble with his wife whom he was married to for over 75 years. When the dementia was diagnosed, Grandma lost the will to live. The technical cause of her death was a easily curable bladder infection, but I tend to think she wasn't too into living after she'd lost her lifelong partner. They have gotten married when my grandfather was 19 and she was 16, those kinds of things happened in those days. They were sweet simple people. I remember the food was good, but there was a kind of strained asceticism. Grandma was perceived as a worrier. Grandpa would go to his study and work on his ministry work. They were not wealthy but they were kind to take me for a month in the summer. Grandpa would take me to Six Flags one year, and they traveled to Washington DC and took me to the museums. They were happy to entertain their grandson and while it was weird sometimes to be in a church going family when my parents were atheists, there was a kindness in the community. I tagged along with my grandfather and was often bored, but I feel so lucky to have gotten to know them. 

My father is getting towards the end of his life, and soon I will too. The cycle of life is a funny old thing, you can't really think your way out of it. You can try and age well by eating well and exercise, socializing and doing meaningful things. But time marches on, and if you're lucky to live a long time, you collect loss of family and friends until it's your turn.  

I feel like Henry holding John towards the end was more intimate than my family dying while I was far away.

I still remember the death of Oscar, a cat. I've lost a lot of dogs and cats throughout my life. I think sometimes of getting a dog even though I don't think the city is a place for dogs, they're too wild to be cooped up all day.

Sometimes you drift away from people and you've lost them before they die. Divorce is a death of a relationship but the other person is still alive. Having children is pretty difficult with someone you're not longer in a relationship with. Thoreau proposed to Ellen, but nobody after that. His romantic and sexual life are pretty unknown. He had many great friendships and was close with his family. 

I've studied death and grieving, reading many books on the subject after being assigned The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker in college. There are many good memoirs, and technical books like How We Die. There are many good movies that explore grief. The conclusion is to live your life as best you can, and that was what Thoreau was all about, living life deliberately. 

Grief is a sun you can't look into for too long, humans reset mostly, and the grief flavors life moving forward. This father's day I think about my cousins, who have newborns and and one's wife is pregnant, and they have lost their father. The cycle of life. When my sons were born I thought about who was there to notice and who wasn't. 

Thoreau got psychosomatic symptoms and thought he had lockjaw and was dying but didn’t. 

He writes the poem:

Brother where dost thou dwell?

What sun shines for thee now?

Dost thou indeed farewell?

As we wished here below.…