In the memoirs about grief that I admire most, the writers portray their deceased loved ones in lively, vivid detail that conveys not only the perfect, shining moments of tender regard and consideration but also the toenail clippings in the bathroom floor, the fights that made no sense, the daily irritations and annoyances they once took for granted but no longer can. These details underscore the immensity of their loss by reminding the reader that their loved one was a whole, complete person, not merely an idea. And I imagine the writers of such memoirs must find some pleasure, or at least satisfaction, in being able to reminisce about their dead without encountering the awkward silences or abrupt swerves in topic that I’ve learned often greet any mention, no matter how lighthearted or casual, of my deceased spouse, as though merely speaking his name is some kind of terrible faux pas.
When my friend A. read early drafts of poems from the project I alternately referred to as “the grief poems,” or sometimes, less politely, “the dead husband poems,” she occasionally commented how nice it was to “see” my husband on the page. Her praise, “That’s such a Randal thing to do,” or, “I can hear him saying this,” always made me glad she thought I’ve gotten it right, gotten him right, but it also sometimes made me feel guilty for not including more such moments. There are a number of reasons why I struggled to do so: because I was worried about sentimentality, and also worried that my attempts to resist sentimentality would lead me to overcompensate and make my husband sound like a jerk, which he only was occasionally. Because the details of our daily domestic back-and-forth often seemed too mundane for readers to care about. Because so many of my attempts to convey my husband’s personality and character felt inadequate. And also because for a long time it simply hurt too much to write about Randal’s life: the same details and examples I needed to make him seem vital and interesting to readers were the very things I missed the most.
I don’t remember exactly what inspired me to write “My dead husband,” though I suspect it was fueled not only by grief but also by the irrational and unfair anger I often felt in the months immediately following my husband’s death. I was angry that Randal had died, of course, but I also was angry about how he’d died, with so little warning that we never had a chance to discuss his final wishes or how I should handle the dozens of details, administrative and emotional, that followed. And I also was angry with the people, including members of our families, who I thought were remembering my husband the wrong way and who wanted me to endorse versions of him I found untrue or incomplete.
I do know that once the poem’s refrain presented itself, I wrote the first draft in a kind of searing, white-hot rush, with each essential fact I included inspiring whole cascades of others, not all of which made it into the final draft. The poem’s originating impulse was to try to tell the truth about who my husband really was, and to abandon, however briefly, my understanding that I was attempting an impossible task, that anything I said would be just as biased and limited as the notions I was trying to correct. Really, I think everything I hoped the poem would accomplish is encapsulated in the three words of the refrain: “my” to establish my authority and distinguish my dead husband from anyone else’s; “dead” to underscore the loss, and also my insistence on not softening or disguising that essential fact with prettier, less precise language; “husband” because of all it implies, including that sharing a home—and a life—with Randal for nearly two decades meant that I knew him in ways no one else did. I hope that this finished poem succeeds in showing the reader a little bit of who my husband was, though I know this rendering—despite my best efforts—is still incomplete. He was, like all of us, too complex and contradictory, too fully alive, for any one piece of writing to do him justice.
I’ve asked myself—of course I have—what Randal would think about how he’s portrayed in this poem. He was, without question, a huge supporter of my writing and of what it took for me to do my writing—the early morning hours I spent at my desk, the trips I took for readings and conferences, the way the topics I was obsessed with—ghosts, bible stories, professional wrestling—would seep into every aspect of our shared lives. And he tolerated and made possible all of those things despite not being a writer (or even much of a reader, and certainly not of poetry) himself. But he loved me and I loved writing, so he loved my writing and did whatever he could to make it possible even when doing so was an inconvenience. There are things in the poem I’m sure he’d rather I hadn’t said: I think he’d be embarrassed by the praise of his legs and the mention of his loneliness; he might point out that I often asked for a piece of the frozen pizzas I so disdained, which he gladly gave to me; and I’m absolutely sure he’d tell me it wasn’t necessary to say “dead” so very often. And I’m equally convinced that despite his objections, he’d trust me enough—as his wife and also as a poet—to let my version of him be the one I send into the world.
Carrie Shipers’s poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New England Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other journals. She is the author of Ordinary Mourning (ABZ, 2010), Cause for Concern (Able Muse, 2015), Family Resemblances (University of New Mexico, 2016), and Grief Land (University of New Mexico, forthcoming) as well as two chapbooks.
Illustration by: Anthony Tremmaglia. Anthony Tremmaglia is an Ottawa-based illustrator, artist, and educator. His clients include WIRED, Scientific American, Smart Money, HOW, and San Francisco Weekly.