I’ve written here before about my passion for the work of Emily Dickinson, most particularly in “Off to See the Wizard.” I subscribe to three different e-mail discussion lists devoted to things Dickinsonian. I read from her poems several times a week. In fact, like a dedicated student of scripture, I have more than one edition of The Complete Poems, a concordance, and a shelf full of reference works, biographies, and commentaries. 

Every once in a while I come across an ED reference from a realm outside these dedicated precincts. For example, in his foreword to The Best American Poetry 1999, David Lehman writes about how poetry has been "punctuating sitcoms and drama series" -- "A college student in Party of Five complains about having to write a term paper on Madonna's second album. 'It's Emily Dickinson we need help with,' she very sensibly says."

A poet included in that anthology, Chard deNiord, is represented by his poem “Pasternak.” In his explanatory note, he talks about his interest in Pasternak as an exiled writer whose own experience was reflected in that of his most famous character, Dr. Zhivago. "I was particularly in awe of what Emily Dickinson would have called his [Pasternak's] 'adequate' gift for two genres: he was able to complement his poetry with an epic novel ...," writes deNiord.

Today I heard Emily Dickinson invoked when I was not expecting it, although given the setting, I should not have been surprised. 

This afternoon I attended the funeral of a 34-year-old woman who died quite suddenly and unexpectedly last week from complications of Addison's disease, which she had lived with for 14 years. Linda was a member of the family that once owned the ground on which my house sits, and was a member of the congregation whose church steeple I can see across my backyard vista from my writing place in the kitchen. 

She had been one of my students, graduating in the same class (1983) with my second stepdaughter. She attended my daughter’s baptism in 1985, and the reception I gave afterward, bringing a small gift. She had hoped to become a nurse, but her illness complicated those plans, and she ended her studies twice. 

She kept in touch sporadically -- from time to time  I would see her or her sister at my neighborhood supermarket when they were shopping for their grandmother. Eight years ago she married a classmate. I knew that infertility dictated by the Addison’s was a great cross to them. 

She took great joy in her marriage, her nieces and nephews, her church work and her prayer ministry. She was a woman of great faith, a woman of courage, a woman of peace. 

The minister who conducted the service had known Linda from the time she was in junior high. For fifteen years he was pastor of that neighborhood church across the meadow. It was that congregation that had provided my daughter’s first Vacation Bible School experience and a midweek youth group that she attended, although we were not members there. Now he has a church in a distant city. Nevertheless, it was he to whom the family turned in this time of sorrow.

He took as his scripture text portions of the Book of Revelation, beginning with 4:1 -- "After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open." He talked about transitions, how they are often painful, but all are preparation for the final transition to eternal life with God. He said that we cannot see this world with real eyes, but only with eyes of faith, and that to very few are given the capacity to articulate what they see.

One such person, he said, a little closer to our own experience than the writer of Revelation, was 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, whose works are often thought difficult, unless one uses one's eyes and mind of faith. ED was just about Linda's age when she wrote the following poem --

He then read the widely-anthologized "Because I could not stop for Death --,"  a poem known by some who know nothing else of Emily Dickinson. His reading was stunning.You could hear every capital letter and every dash, (a feature important to those in the Cult of Emily), and I heard the poem as if for the first time. I felt that the eyes of my eyes were opened, and the ears of my ears could hear. I wept that I had been given the capacity, despite some physical complications right now, to witness this lesson.

And, ever self-referential, I'd like to note that the pastor, who graduated from high school in 1971, was, as an eleventh grader, among the first class of students to whom I introduced Emily Dickinson.