Tag Archives: mourning

Lost Human Voices Speak through Us

By Robin Bates | Published: October 31, 2020

May Sarton’s “All Souls” finds that a new richness comes with mourning. We acknowledge how entwined we were with those who have passed on.

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Refusal to Mourn a Death by Fire?!

By Robin Bates | Published: November 14, 2018

How do we process the deaths caused by California’s Camp Fire? Dylan Thomas’s scandalously title “Refusal to Mourn” offers a way.

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How Owen Meany Comforts the Bereaved

By Robin Bates | Published: October 23, 2017

In his interactions with friends and family of slain Green Beret Sgt. La David Johnson, Trump is making the issue about himself. “Prayer for Owen Meany” reminds us that we should focus instead on the mourners.

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He Doth Sit By Us and Moan

By Robin Bates | Published: August 30, 2015

Last week I was honored by my friend Jean Yeatman when she asked me to sit with her at her mother’s deathbed. We talked about childhood excursions that our families took together and also about the importance of ritual in our lives. Today’s William Blake poem is for her and her brother Clay. Blake finds […]

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Mourning Lincoln, Mourning My Son

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2015

Whitman’s mourning of Lincoln in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” also captures what it feels like to lose a child.

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