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Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve: A Cultural Study

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"Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve" is a splendid achievement and a fine companion for the "Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies." I believe the elegies collection gave birth to "Death's Door."

Gilbert combines clarity and compassion, an essential combination to bring to the ultimate topic: death. The book is divided into three major parts: I. Arranging My Mourning: Five Meditations on the Psychology of Grief; II. History Makes Death: How the Twentieth Century Reshaped Dying and Mourning; II. The Handbook of Heartbreak: Contemporary Elegy and Lamentation. From this selection of categories alone, you can savor her ear for phrase and mind that adventures and gathers together psychology, History, and Literature.

Gilbert is woman and scholar and teacher and writer in this magnificent book. I read "Death's Door" as my mother lay dying and found much comfort here. I received the additional benefit of having the context of my own work illuminated and enlarged.

Sandra M. Gilbert's "Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve" gave me a context to place my work within. "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" fits into a tradition I was not consciously aware of as I wrote. I felt I had come home into a larger family with many voices.


Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

Surveys of death and grieving often embrace the psychology so much that there isn't much room for other approaches, so it's surprising to find a treatment which blends a poet and critic's vision and experiences with a focus on the psychology of pain and recovery. Such a survey is DEATH'S DOOR: MODERN DYING AND THE WAYS WE GRIEVE. A survey of social and cultural history documents different processes of death and grief in society, while the author struggles with her own reactions to deaths of loved ones. Her different viewpoints help DEATH'S DOOR stand apart from the myriad of titles on the topic.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

We humans are the only animals that know we are going to die. The only real questions are how and when. For Ms. Gilbert's husband, he went in for a relativly minor operation and never recovered.

We use a lot of euphemisms to refer to death: a hit, a contract, passing away, crossing Jordan. And through the twentieth century we have seen a lot of death: World War I with its machine guns and poison gas, The Holocaust (In capitals, that means the jewish one in Germany, but there have been several from Turkey/Armenia, Cambodia, 'ethnic cleansing,' and the current Darfur situation.), Natural disasters from tsunamis, earthquakes, and of course 9/11.

There's been a lot of literature about death, from the Bible through Shakespeare to numerous others (Amazon lists hundreds of titles). This particular book has two real strengths: First comes from Ms. Gilbert's mastery of the language and her analysis of her own feelings of grief. Then there is a carefully made selection of quotes from past literature.

I don't know that this makes our own future any more clear, but it certainly helps in the understanding of our grief when a loved one dies.

Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve: A Cultural Study by Sandra M. Gilbert is one of those remarkable books that leave me feeling inadequate to respond appropriately. Gilbert, known for her academic approach to common literary themes, was inspired to write about the elegy, how poets write through grief and mourn on the page. After some research and some disillusionment, she set the project aside. But life and loss have a way of infusing past inspiration with new life and Gilbert's own grief drove her to return to this project.

The result is this remarkable book that works on a myriad of levels. With the death of a child and later of her husband, Gilbert infuses a traditionally academic text with a personal empathy that elevates this above and beyond a dry resource. Drawing not only on the works of poets and novelists, Gilbert alludes to artwork, photography, even experimental works from the AIDS quilt to internet memorials. Anyone familiar with Plath or Eliot, with Yeats, Keats, or Hardy will be comfortable with the sections that compare and contrast the way each writer approaches death and loss. I found myself setting the book down frequently, doing my own research and rediscovery as I contemplated not only what Gilbert shared but remembered poems and writers to which she makes no reference at all.

In trying to approach the shifts in how we, as a society and individuals, grieve, Gilbert repeatedly confronts the impossibility of not only avoiding death but the inevitability of how change has affected not only the process of mourning but of death itself. Progress in medicine has moved death from being in the home to somewhere sterile and removed. "Progress" in warfare also has an impact as those who survived World War I are confronted with not merely the loss of a single family member but the death of a whole generation of young men. How long do you wear widow's weeds when you are mourning the death of a husband, a brother, a son, and more? The implication on faith is also addressed for how does one embrace a bodily resurrection when only parts of a loved one's body ever make it home?

I find myself, even as I write this review, wanting to list the many points Gilbert makes about the spontaneous memorials-those clusters of flowers, stuffed animals, etc. that manifest on the side of the road where someone has died-to how art has evolved from showing the suffering of saints to exploring the agony of a parent dying from Alzheimer's on film. Rather than reinforce the idea that death is sacrosanct, Gilbert suggests that the modern and post-modern era has realized that there is nothing sacred about death and dying and that sterilizing death by removing it to hospices or hospitals leaves those who survive at a loss. With the process of death changing, mourning too becomes something that we no longer know how to express. From women ripping their hair and clothing in grief, from keening and wailing, we now offer antidepressants and the impossibility of closure.

If nothing else, Gilbert offers the promise that death is not only inevitable but it is not something from which we ever fully recover. For this reader, knowing that some pain can never be left behind and bearing the burden of grief is the inevitable grace of living, is a profound comfort. Possibly because I fully believe that compassion, that feeling with someone that can only come from empathy, I can appreciate the despairing message of Gilbert's exploration and it is not surprising to know that she could not approach the subject of death and grief until she herself had been fully immersed in the experience of loss. While not an easy book to read, it is one I would encourage anyone who loves literature and art to read, especially if you are comfortable with questions and not seeking answers because, when it comes right down to it, for death there really are no answers-only the inevitably endlessly open door.

PS: I recommended this book to my mother and she immediately ordered it. When she received her paperback copy, she called me up. "This book is heavy." Yes. In many ways this is a heavy book, not an easy one to carry or to read. I can't even imagine how Sandra M Gilbert lived through the writing of this book without feeling some sadness and I can't thank her enough for her bravery in facing death day after day as she chose to do in writing this book.

PPS: Another story about this book. When Rob went to the hospital, I stayed behind only long enough to get things organized at home, just in case. Just in case what, I could not say. After all, Rob had gone to the hospital before and been sent home after only a few hours. Still, I sent Marc to the store to get some things and I gathered myself and my things, including the inevitable pile of books that I simply must take with me everywhere I go. Death's Door was in that pile. It was not until I got in the car that I realized that this was not an appropriate book to carry with me to a hospital emergency room. It isn't like it is a small book, one that I could easily tuck away. But then I thought that if I chose to leave it behind then I would be showing some superstitious fear, denying death somehow. It was silly of me, of course, to sit there worrying about the worst that could happen and somehow connect it with my not bringing the book with me.

Then the doctor explained that the CT scan did, indeed, show an enflamed appendix which would have to be removed. I held onto Gilbert's book, in which she shares her own experience of her husband's death due to complications stemming from a routine surgery, as if it were a shield. I didn't open it, couldn't dare read it, but I wouldn't leave it in my bag. At this point it became a sort of talisman, a refusal to believe that the worst could happen, that other husbands die due to complications but mine would not. Period.

Of course, we all know how that story ends; Rob came through the surgery well enough. I did not, however, begin reading the book again until he started turning cranky, annoying everyone from the staff to me, his sleep deprived wife. (What the hell are hospitals thinking with those impossibly uncomfortable chairs that unfold into still more uncomfortable cots? Insane and torturous.)

I think that once I really knew Rob was safe, I no longer had to just carry the book around but could return to reading it for the research I was doing. Superstition and irrational thinking aside, I wanted to share this part of my experience with this book as well.