Home Burial
By Robert Frost

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’

‘What is it—what?’ she said.

                                          ‘Just that I see.’

‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound—’

                             ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’

‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’

‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

                                              ‘Help me, then.’

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.
I don’t know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.
Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
But two that do can’t live together with them.’
She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.
Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it’s something human.
Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

‘There you go sneering now!’

                                           ‘I’m not, I’m not!
You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:
“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.
The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go--
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.
‘Where do you mean to go?  First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force.  I will!—’


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Below is the Summary and Commentary about this Frost poem I found on another site.  There are countless emotional complexities involved after losing a child, and the relationship between how the mother and the father cope with their loss is one of the most significant and difficult to explain and/or understand.  Unfortunately, I can relate all too well to these inter-personal dynamics.

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Summary:

The poem presents a few moments of charged dialogue in a strained relationship between a rural husband and wife who have lost a child. The woman is distraught after catching sight of the child’s grave through the window—and more so when her husband doesn’t immediately recognize the cause of her distress. She tries to leave the house; he importunes her to stay, for once, and share her grief with him—to give him a chance. He doesn’t understand what it is he does that offends her or why she should grieve outwardly so long. She resents him deeply for his composure, what she sees as his hard-heartedness. She vents some of her anger and frustration, and he receives it, but the distance between them remains. She opens the door to leave, as he calls after her.

Commentary:

 “Home Burial” is one of Frost’s most overtly sad poems. There are at least two tragedies here: the death of a child, which antecedes the poem, and the collapse of a marriage, which the poem foreshadows. “Home Burial” is about grief and grieving, but most of all it seems to be about the breakdown and limits of communication.

The husband and the wife represent two very different ways of grieving. The wife’s grief infuses every part of her and does not wane with time. She has been compared to a female character in Frost’s A Masque of Mercy, of whom another character says, “She’s had some loss she can’t accept from God.” The wife remarks that most people make only pretense of following a loved one to the grave, when in truth their minds are “making the best of their way back to life
/ And living people, and things they understand.” She, however, will not accept this kind of grief, will not turn from the grave back to the world of living, for to do so is to accept the death. Instead she declares that “the world’s evil.”

The husband, on the other hand, has accepted the death. Time has passed, and he might be more likely now to say, “That’s the way of the world,” than, “The world’s evil.” He did grieve, but the outward indications of his grief were quite different from those of his wife. He threw himself into the horrible task of digging his child’s grave—into physical work. This action further associates the father with a “way-of-the-world” mentality, with the cycles that make up the farmer’s life, and with an organic view of life and death. The father did not leave the task of burial to someone else, instead, he physically dug into the earth and planted his child’s body in the soil.

One might say that any form of grief in which the bereaved stubbornly finds the world “evil” is not a very healthy one. One could also claim that the bereaved who never talks through his grief—who never speaks of it—is doing himself and others injury. But, again, the purpose of the poem isn’t really to determine the right way to grieve. Rather, it intends to portray a failure of
empathy and communication. Each person fails to appreciate the other’s grieving
process—fails to credit it, allow it, and have patience with it. And each fails to alter even slightly his or her own form of grief in order to accommodate the other.

Note how utterly the woman misunderstands the man’s actions. To her, the act of burying the child was one of supreme indifference, while to him it must have been one of supreme suffering—an attempt to convince himself, through physical labor, that this is the natural order of things; or an act of self-punishment, a penance befitting the horror of the loss; or simply a way of steeping himself in his grief, of forcing it into the muscles of his arms and back, of feeling it in the dirt on his clothes. Note, too, how the wife completely fails to grasp the meaning of her husband’s words: “ ‘Three foggy mornings and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.’ ” Indisposed to see her husbands form of grieving as acceptable, she takes his words as literal, inappropriate comments on fence building. Yet they have everything to do with the little body in the darkened parlor. He is talking about death, about the futility of human effort, about fortune and misfortune, about the unfairness of fate and nature. 

And yet, the man is also partially to blame. If he had any understanding of how to communicate to her, he would not leave everything unspoken. He would make some concession to her needs and articulate a brief defense. “You misunderstand,” he might say. “When I said that, it was because that was the only way I could say anything at all about our loss.” Instead, he lets her
accusations float in the air, as if they were just hysteria and nonsense and not worth challenging. This displays a lack of empathy and a failure of communication as fatal as hers. When she describes his heartless act of grave digging, he says only, “I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. / I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.” This leaves her free to believe that he accepts her accusation, that the curse refers to his hard-heartedness and not the terrible irony of her misinterpretation. He uses irony where she requires clarity. She needs him to admit to agony, and he can grant her no more than veiled references to a substratum of unspoken grief. And in the face of her griefs obvious persistence, he makes a callous—or, at very least, extremely counterproductive—remark: “I do think, though, you overdo it a little.”

How important a role does gender play in this tragedy? Certainly it has some relevance. There are the husband’s futile, abortive physical threats, as if he could physically coerce her into sharing her grief—but these are impulses of desperation. And both husband and wife acknowledge that there are separate spheres of being and understanding. “Cant a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” asks the husband. “I don’t know rightly whether any man can,” she replies. A little later he laments, “A man must partly give up being a man / With womenfolk.” He sees his taciturnity and his inability to say the appropriate thing as a masculine trait, and she seems to agree. (Yet she sees his quiet grave digging as nearly inhuman.) Additionally, it is fairly standard to assume that more outward emotion is permitted of women than of men—the tragedy of this poem might then be seen as an exacerbation of a pervasive inequality. Yet one enduring stereotype of gender distinctions is the man’s inability to read between the lines, his failure to apprehend the emotions underlying the literal meaning of the woman’s words. In this poem, husband and wife fail equally in this manner. A woman, perhaps, might be less likely to dig a grave to vent her grief, but she is just as likely to react to death by withdrawal or by immersion in quotidian tasks. The reader witnesses the breakdown of a marriage (the burial of a home, expressed in the title’s double entendre), but more basically, this is a breakdown of human communication.

Partly, that breakdown is due to the inescapable limits of any communication. Much of the literature of the twentieth century stems from an acknowledgement of these limits, from attempts to grapple with them and, paradoxically, express them. A great deal of Frost’s poetry deals with an essential loneliness, which is linked to the limits of empathy and the sense that some things are simply inexpressible. What can one really say about the loss of one’s child? Can one adequately convey one’s grief on such an occasion? Is empathy—always a challenge—doomed to fail under such particular strain? 

We should note in passing—though it is not of merely passing importance—that Frost knew firsthand the experience of losing children. His firstborn son, Elliott, died of cholera at the age of three. Later, his infant daughter died. Two more of his children died fairly young, one by suicide.

Taken from:  http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section4.rhtml

Here "A Song for Kellen"
By Sheldon Aucoin
 
There's a night light in the hallway
in case he needs to see
There's a storybook laid out for him
his favorite one to read
There's an old man in the study
with a picture in his hand
of a young boy and his daddy
the two were best of friends
 
And he lies awake at night
afraid to dream
Afraid to go back to that day
when he lost everything
And he hears a voice beside him
softly say "Hey Dad!" How've you been?
 
He just smiles and he says to him
I'm still Here, I'm still Here
I'm still right where you left me.
 
As he watches in the shadows
He can hear his daddy pray
And he's asking why the good Lord
Had to take his boy away.
And if only for a moment
he could hold him once again
he would offer up his final breath
to be with his best friend.
 
So he slips away that night into a dream
that takes him to the day
when he had everything
And he hears a voice beside him
softly say "Hey Dad!" How've you been?
 
He just smiles and he says to him
Now I'm Here, Now I'm Here
Now I'm Here right with you.



  

Video Description:  A father loses his son at a very early age. He was just 7 years old. He
is devastated. His love for his son is so powerful that he creates an altered reality in which his son is still in the house. So he carries on his life as usual. Turning down his covers, getting his favorite story book out and turning on the night light in the hall way every night. He lives out the rest of his life like this until he becomes an old man. The boy`s love for his dad is so great that his spirit has stayed in the house to watch over his dad. One night the old man prays to God to have his son with him again, and that night the old man dies.
He is then reunited with his boy......This is a story about Eternal Love!!!

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"Here" was written a few years ago, but it now has become a song to honour and remember a local boy from the author's hometown.

Kellen Barry Surette:  February 8, 2006 - September 11, 2013

When Tomorrow Starts Without Me

When tomorrow starts without me, 
And I’m not there to see,
If the sun should rise and find your eyes...
All filled with tears for me;
I wish so much you wouldn’t cry
The way you did today,
While thinking of the many things,
We didn’t get to say.
 
I know how much you love me,
As much as I love you,
And each time you think of me,
I know you’ll miss me too;
But when tomorrow starts without me,
Please try to understand,
That an angel came and called my name,
And took me by the hand,
And said my place was ready,
In heaven far above
And that I’d have to leave behind
All those I dearly love. 

But as I turned to walk away,
A tear fell from my eye
For all my life, I’d always thought, 
I didn’t want to die.
I had so much to live for,
So much left yet to do,
It seemed almost impossible,
That I was leaving you.

I thought of all the yesterdays,
The good ones and the bad,
The thought of all the love we shared,
And all the fun we had.
If I could relive yesterday
Just even for a while,
I’d say good-bye and kiss you
And maybe see you smile.

But then I fully realized
That this could never be,
For emptiness and memories,
Would take the place of me.
And when I thought of worldly things
I might miss come tomorrow,
I thought of you, and when I did
My heart was filled with sorrow.

But when I walked through heaven’s gates
I felt so much at home
When God looked down and smiled at me,
From His great golden throne,
He said “This is eternity,
And all I’ve promised you. 

Today your life on earth is past
But here it starts anew.
I promise no tomorrow,
But today will always last,
And since each day’s the same way,
There’s no longing for the past.
You have been so faithful,
So trusting and so true.

Though there were times
You did some things
You knew you shouldn’t do.
But you have been forgiven
And now at last you’re free.
So won’t you come and take my hand
And share my life with me?”

So when tomorrow starts without me,
Don’t think we’re far apart,
For every time you think of me,
I’m right here, in your heart.

-David M. Romano

For all the Dads out there who will be missing their sons and/or daughters on Father's Day this coming weekend.

Taken from the Grieving Dads Project website: 

http://www.grievingdads.com/fathers-day-poem/


Dear Mr. Hallmark ….. One More Time

Hello there Mr. Hallmark man,
I wrote to you in May
To ask that words of love be shared
With my mom on Mother’s Day.

Just as there is no card for Mom
To let her know I care,
There is no card for my dad, too,
And I have so much to share.

It’s very hard for my loving dad
To know that I’m okay.
To protect me was his job, he feels,
So he thinks he failed some way.

Although I had to leave this world,
While still considered young,
There is no way he ever failed--
There’s no more he could have done.

My dad he tends to question
Those things he cannot see.
I always send him little signs
To say, “Hey, Dad, it’s me!”

I hear him crying in the car,
The shower hides his tears.
He feels he has to be so strong
For those he holds so dear.

My dad he often gets so mad
At what became of me.
He wants so much to understand,
He says, “How could this be?”

I somehow need to let him know,
Though impossible it seems--
For him to live and laugh again
Will fulfill so many dreams.

The card I need to send right now
To a dad as great as mine,
Will thank him for the love he gave
Throughout my brief lifetime.

He’s still the one that I call Dad,
Our bond’s forever strong,
‘Cuz even though he can’t see me,
Our love lives on and on.

Please help me find a way
To tell my dad that when
It comes his time to leave the earth
I’ll be waiting there for him.

And also, Mr. Hallmark man,
Please help him to believe,
That nothing will ever change the fact
That my dad he’ll always be.

Author Unknown

The Strength of an Egg

Parents of children with cancer, or really any serious condition, are  often referred to or viewed as having strength "like a rock." Albeit flattering,  it isn't quite true. It is more like the strength of an egg. An egg, you ask?  Yes, an egg. If you think about an egg, you will see the point I make.

An egg has a polished smooth outer appearance with no cracks or weak spots .........visible. It seems almost inconceivable that the inside might not be as smooth and solid as the outside.
Most children, at some point in their lifetime, are shown the famous egg trick. An egg set at  just the right angle can withstand enormous amounts of pressure and cannot be cracked or broken. Yet that same egg, tapped gently at an even slightly different angle will break. The contents, once so neatly concealed inside, will come spilling out, and the no longer perfect shell will be crushed. Then the  shell looks so fragile that it seems inconceivable that it ever held any strength.

That is where parents of children with cancer are more like  eggs than rocks. A rock is solid all the way through. If you tried to break a rock, it would be almost impossible. If successful, one would find that there  was nothing inside but more rock. It takes a lot more than pure
hardness to hold  the hand of hope. These parents are not solid all the way through. They hurt, they fear, they cry, they hope. It takes a very careful balancing act to keep the shell from being shattered.

Balancing an egg while running a household, going for doctor visits and hospital stays, keeping the family  together, and holding on to the constantly unraveling ties of your sanity can be very tricky indeed. Occasionally, the angle will be off and the shell will break, shattering hope and the neatly secured appearances of a truly fragile existence. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, though, parents of kids with cancer will pick themselves up and put themselves back together again.

By Juliet Freitag

Poem: Ask My Dad How He Is
Category: Writing and Poetry

My Dad, he tells alot of lies,
He never did before,
But from now until he dies,
He'll tell a whole lot more...

Ask my Dad how he is,
And because he can't explain,
He will tell a little lie,
Because he can't describe the pain...

Ask my dad how he is,
And he'll say "alright",
But if that's really the truth,
Tell me why does he cry each night...

Ask my Dad how he is,
He seems to cope so well,
He didn't have a choice you see,
Or the strength to yell...

Ask my Dad how he is,
"I'm fine, I'm well, I'm coping",
For God's sake Dad, just tell the truth,
Just say your heart is broken...

He'll love me all his life,
I loved him all of mine,
But if you ask him how he is,
He'll lie and say "just fine"...

I am here in Heaven,
I can not hug from here,
So if he lies...don't listen,
Hug him and hold him near...

On the day we meet again,
We'll smile and I'll be bold,
I'll say "You're lucky to get in here Dad,
With all the lies you told".

Author Unknown

My daddy is survivor too...
Category: Writing and Poetry

My daddy is a survivor too,
Which is no surprise to me.
He's always been like a lighthouse
That helps you cross a stormy sea.

But I walk with my daddy each day to lift him when he's down.
I wipe the tears he hides from others;
He cries when no one's around.

I watch him sit up late at night with my picture in his hand.
He cries as he tries to grieve alone,
And wishes he could understand.

My daddy is like a tower of strength.
He's the greatest of them all!
But, there are times when he needs to cry...
Please be there when he falls.

Hold his hand or pat his shoulder...
And tell him it's okay.
Be his strength when he's sad,
Help him mourn in his own way.

Now, as I watch over my precious dad from the
Heavens up above...
I'm so proud that he's a survivor...
And, I can still feel his love.

Author Unknown

Dads Hurt Too
Category: Writing and Poetry

Dads Hurt Too

People don't always see the tears a dad cries,
His heart is broken too when his child dies.

He tries to hold it together and be strong,
Even though his world's gone wrong.

He holds his wife as her tears fall,
Comforts her through it all,

He goes through his day doing what he's supposed to do,
But a piece of his heart has been ripped away too.

So when he's alone he lets out his pain,
And his tears come like falling rain.

His world has crashed in around him,
And a world that was once bright, has gone dim.

He feels he has to be strong for others,
But Dads hurt too, not just the Mothers,

He searches for answers but none are to be found,
He hides behind a mask when he is feeling down.

He smiles through his tears,
He struggles and holds in his fears.

But what you see on the outside is not always real,
Men don't always show how they really feel.

So I'd like to ask a favor of you,
The next time you see a mother hurting over the loss of her child,

Please remember.....Dads Hurt Too!

Author Unknown

There are still days (like today) that I feel like the Invisible Man.  While talking to someone at work today about Darrel for the first time, they immediately wanted to know how Rebecca and the girls handled the entire situation (seemingly oblivious to the fact I suffered a devastating blow and loss as well!!)  I just found this on a Facebook group this afternoon.  So many truths in here that I had to repost it.

*************************
The Invisible Man

It didn’t take long to realize that grief for the father of a child was going to be different. When the first people started coming to the house after the death of our baby, the question seemed to ring, 'Where is your wife'? 'How is she doing?'
 
In their minds they realized she had lost a child. She would be grieving the loss. She would be having a hard time, but as for me, the father, they seemed to think I wouldn’t miss
him/her at all. There seemed to be a consensus that the mother suffers the loss but the
father doesn’t. Neighbours would walk by me on their way to see my wife. They would
comfort her. “We are so sorry,” they would say. “Is there anything we can do? How hard this
must be for you.” All this time I stood there too. Standing there as if I was invisible. Yes, right from the start it was obvious grief for the father was going to be different. The death had
been sudden. It was unexpected. No warning, no way for us to know our son was going
to bed that night so happy and full of life not to wake up in the morning. It hit hard. Added to
the overwhelming feeling of loss was the weight of guilt I carried. Unceasing guilt that
plagued the mind. It has many names but for most it is called the “if only.” “If only” I would have, “if only” I would have seen, “if only, if only, if only....”

The father is the protector of the family. As protector of the family I should have been able to
prevent the death. It was my responsibility to see the subtle changes.  I really knew these
statements weren’t true but so many questions filled my mind. Questions that have no
answers but questions that are so hard to say the least. Most don’t want to hear the father
ask these questions so he has to carry them all by himself. “If only ” are a terrible disease.
They result in an added burden to those who let them run their course. They run to wrong
conclusions, an unneeded addition to the feelings of guilt. There I stood, the Invisible Man. I hurt, hurt so very deep but it was soon obvious I would be unnoticed. Unnoticed with a
barrage of questions to fill my mind.

The father who wrote this is unknown