Information Woman!

Poem 16 (Pandemic Day 31)

You Were Right, Emily

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--

The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

About the bustle, you were right, Emily, for on the three times Death
visited our house, the bustle began right away with parishioners from
my dad's three country churches bringing food; oval casseroles of
macaroni and hamburger, flushed with home-canned tomatoes;
rectangular glass pans, holding dense chocolate cakes, deepened
with red food coloring, heaped with cocoa and butter frosting;

circular glass pie plates with lard and butter crusts, crimped carefully,
lightly browned in wood stove ovens, tart custardy lemon, crowned with
puffy tan peaks of meringue. Bustle of casseroles to comfort us for losing
our baby brother, John Phillip, taken by the furniture store owner
and placed in such a tiny casket just after he had learned to laugh aloud.
Cakes to help us forget our mother Hildur Linnea "gone home to be with

Jesus," our father told us, her 31-year-old rheumatic heart stopped forever
from beating. Pies to lessen our grief over our 14-year-old sister JoAnne Helene,
who spent her last summer afternoon sunning with her friend Susanna,
but awakening at midnight, gasping for breath, dead by morning.

All three of them disappeared into their caskets, and I stood, five years old,
eight years old and nineteen years old, watching my father scatter dirt over
them, entoning the ancient words: "Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return,
in sure and certain hope of the resurrection," and again you were right, Emily,
for his words marked the putting away of our love until eternity.

Phebe Hanson, Why Still Dance: 75 Years: 75 Poems, Nodin Press, 2003.

It's appropriate that the introduction to this book of poetry was written by Howard Mohr, author of How to Speak Minnesotan, for her Minnesota roots are very evident in the poem-- stoic resignation accompanied by hotdish and a 9" x 13" pan of frosted cake. As author Trish Hampl notes in her review, "Phebe Hanson writes in the American vernacular, but her subject is the American sublime... How does a voice so immediate, so down-to-earth sing such rhapsodies?"

Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of my sister Marian's death; two days after her daughter's birthday and a day before my daughter's birthday. She was hospitalized for a week and our family held vigil at the hospital. Someone brought coloring books and art supplies and we expressed our grief that way.

Today my daughter, granddaughter and I drove around delivering Easter baskets. Robin is celebrating her third and likely last birthday to fall on Easter Sunday (the next one is 2093) by giving out baskets to family and friends...it's a lovely gesture and very Minnesotan.