When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

I always associated death with sadness and pain. Last year, I got a phone call from my dad saying that my grandfather probably wouldn’t make it through the night. At the time I was in chapel breaking down a set for a show I just finished performing. The world stopped, my father’s words pierced my flesh, tears came down my cheeks like rapid waters, and I simply couldn’t fathom my grandfather’s death. He had suffered a stroke in the hospital and oxygen couldn’t get to his brain. I was in Lakeland, I wasn’t with him, I couldn’t say goodbye, I couldn’t call him, and I felt horrible. This was the first time death became a personal reality. But I am happy to say, my grandfather is still living.

Reading Walt Whitman’s poem, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, literally takes you on a journey. Some sections of the reading gave me chills. It made me wonder if death can actually haunt someone. Can you feel the presence of death? “Then the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, and the thought of death close-walking the other side of me…” What does the mind go through if this was actual and not paranoia?

But Whitman also took another spin on death; it doesn’t have to be painful. It doesn’t have to be horrid. Yes, I have heard that before, but not in the words of Whitman. Yes, maybe you can feel death presence near, but why should it be bad? What if it’s your time to go? I don’t think am afraid of dying, death shouldn’t be something to fear. Whitman orchestrates his thoughts beautifully, trying to make one understand that very concept. “Come lovely and soothing death…sooner or later delicate death.”