Friday
Our family lost a beautiful friend to cancer recently. When her distraught husband, who is battling his own health issues, asked us for a poem. I sent him Deborah Pope’s “Getting Through” because I know how hard he will have it for quite some time.
We don’t know how long the speaker in the poem has been mourning but it appears to have been a while. She realizes that, if she were rational, she would let go and move on. But love isn’t rational and continues to dominate her life, which leads her to concoct a series of metaphors. She is like a car that can’t get out of the loving gear, a chicken that can’t acknowledge it has lost an integral part of itself, a film that thinks it is still being projected even though it “has jumped the reel” so that one can hear the sound of it “ratcheting on.” Or, in one of the most haunting images, she’s like a phone “ringing and ringing,” unable to acknowledge that those in the house have moved away.
The images continue. Her heart goes blundering on, “a muscle spilling out/ what is no longer wanted.” The words she sends out into the void cannot be heard—she is like the last speaker of a beautiful language that now no one else can hear. Or like a train that has jumped its track and its hurtling towards a boarded-up station. The metaphors pile up, playing off each other, and my hope is that, somewhere amongst them all, our friend’s husband will experience some of the consolation that occurs when we see someone put our pain into words.
It’s much too early in his grieving to think about letting go. In fact, he probably can’t even conceive of it at the moment. That’s why the poem may speak to him.
Getting Through
By Deborah Pope
Like a car stuck in gear,
a chicken too stupid to tell
its head is gone,
or sound ratcheting on
long after the film
has jumped the reel,
or a phone
ringing and ringing
in the house they have all
moved away from,
through rooms where dust
is a deepening skin,
and the locks unneeded,
so I go on loving you,
my heart blundering on,
a muscle spilling out
what is no longer wanted,
and my words hurtling past,
like a train off its track,
toward a boarded-up station,
closed for years,
like some last speaker
of a beautiful language
no one else can hear.
