What words can do

Working in a hospital, I've become fascinated with the concept of death. Having had people close to me die in the past, I've avoided any real thought on the manner. Of course I've given great consideration to what happens to us AFTER we die, and I'm no stranger to sickness and injury. But now that I spend a significant amount of time with gravely ill people, I find myself much more curious about the days, hours and minutes leading up to the point of death. It's so peculiar to me that a woman I just bathed, dressed and conversated with on one day can be dead the next. And even more peculiar that I FELT the death coming. It's strange how you can just look at a person and see death will be arriving shortly.

Anywho, as morbid as all that sounds, I promise you it's all strictly from a medical curiousity standpoint. With all that said, I came home today from work and found myself googling what happens to the body during death. From this research sprung an interesting piece of writing which I found on a hospice website:





"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

”Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘Here she comes!”

And that is dying."

- Henry Van Dyke


I thought that was fantastic and it really reminded me of how much I love literature. Whether it be poetry or really fantastic prose..I'm just blown away by the power of words. Feeling inspired by this newfound favorite quote, I just thought I'd share some of my favorite poems and quotes (and one movie quote). Simply because not enough people spend time reading such things, and the English teacher in me believes everyone should be exposed.




"Not Waving but Drowning"- Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.



"I Carry Your Heart With Me" - EE Cummings


i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)


i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


"Funeral Blues"- WH Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


Excerpt from "Essay on Man"- Alexander Pope

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear- whatever is, is right.



Boots: "I hope no one ever tells her we were the bad guys."
Alvie: "It won't make no difference."

-"Savannah Smiles" (1982) last lines of movie


To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

- Macbeth, "Macbeth"- William Shakespeare


"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know."

- Mr. Antolini "The Catcher in the Rye"- JD Salinger






"If You Forget Me" -Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine







sidenote which has nothing to do with any of this: i've been breaking out in hives the past two days and I haven't a clue what it's from. grrr.