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The Golden Hour

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The Golden Hour by Sue Ellen Thompson follows the death of one woman as it coincides, or perhaps even causes, the emancipation of another. Her mother's cancer diagnosis and eventual death becomes an experience for Thompson of reflection and acceptance. Rather than feel anger toward this incurable disease stealing her mother's life, she writes "In Praise of Cancer," thanking it for offering peacefulness to an old woman. Thompson writes a few poems titled "Happiness," and all of them seem to propose the idea that one does not know happiness until the moment is gone: "he should have shouted at us, This is happiness!" (7). For Thompson it seems that in our youth we move so quickly through life that we do not take the time to find joy in small moments. The collection shows that often we fail to appreciate what we have until we no longer have it. In "What She Wanted," Thompson claims that her mother loved to go grocery shopping and make beds and that the realization of her inability to complete these daily and sometimes slightly annoying tasks as a result of her illness causes her great sadness in her last few months. Her mother tells her "I want to run a race," (49), perhaps exemplifying the desire to do something great yet simple at the end of life; the desire to do something normal or ordinary.
Thompson writes about her mother's life through the perspective of a daughter; she writes about a life the way she saw it being lived. And through her own life she compares herself to her mother, resulting in feelings of inadequacy. In "Five Kids" Thompson writes that she does not know her own daughter as well as her mother knew her five children. In "Average" she ranks her marriage a nine on a scale of ten, but according to her father, his marriage was off the charts. But it is through her mother's illness and death that Thompson seems to find equality with her mother. "Only Child" describes her role as caretaker, and that of her four siblings she is the only one to stay by their mother in the end. She also seems to come to a truce with this comparison in "Letting Go" when her mother needs her permission before dying.
Through her mother's death Sue Ellen Thomson is able to find happiness finally as a woman with "No Children, No Pets"; a woman freed from her constant self-inflicted comparison to another woman; a woman who has found the positive in the loss of a parent. However, she never forgets her mother, for in "Super Bowl Sunday" she confesses that by simply watching boys play football in the snow, she begins to cry for her mother's death. Despite the tragedy of losing a parent, Thompson's poem "Sixteen Months Later" reveals "I am unaccountably happy" (67), while the final poem "The Blue Blanket" offers to readers one last thought of her parents together. For Thompson, happiness can be found in the quiet acceptance of loss, but she also shows the importance of holding on to memories.