I Finally, Fully Appreciate Emily Dickinson

“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.”
- Emily Dickinson ‘Death’

As an English major it is tough to admit that it has taken me 55 years to fully appreciate Emily Dickinson. I just learned a friend of mine from high school is suffering a form of inoperative brain cancer. We have been out of touch for a couple decades. I learned of his status through a mutual friend.

Dickinson’s poem emerged from my memory – after a lot of thought.

So often we hear about a death after it has occurred. We feel sad, maybe devastated. It may be too late to visit or send a note or flowers or a charitable donation. In fact, it may be a year after the fact that you hear or it may be one day too late to get to the service.

But sometimes, as in my old friend’s case, we have a little time to say good-bye.

When my father-in-law passed away six years ago I was traveling on business and it was all I could do to hurry home while my wife hustled off to Brazil hoping to arrive in time for the memorial. Of course, I was holding down the fort at home, while she helped her sister and mother sort out paperwork and legal matters.

Death can be bureaucratic.

But, as Emily told us so succinctly, death doesn’t make appointments and we don’t realize how near “it” is. My friend has anaplastic astrocytoma stage 3 or 4. His sister tells me: “He's been released from treatment and has started hospice care. Hospice care is for patients with less than 6 months to live.” That is death at the door.

We get caught up in our little worlds and we forget about death. But death cannot be put off like some software update.

My old friend has been suffering for a long enough period of time that his business had to be sold and other financial and familial matters are being sorted as I write this.

We’re all too busy to stop for death.

“We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

“Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

“We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

“Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.”

I am hoping to visit my friend before death stops for him. I only followed his activities infrequently from a distance and he was one of those people living a full personal and professional life. Maybe life-affirming people like my old friend actually know somewhere in their bones that their life may be shorter than most.

(The race is on now to let everyone know who ought to know. That is a job for Facebook and anyone in Locust Valley High School's Class o f 1978.)

I have a new appreciation of Emily Dickinson who passed away in 1886 at 56. My old friend is 54.