Home Burial

Home Burial expresses a grieving couple’s inability to communicate. The pair are torn apart not only by the death of their son, but also, by their different coping mechanisms. In the first two stanzas and into the third, the man tries to open communication with his wife/girlfriend regarding what she sees from the “bottom of the stairs,” but she does not want to talk about the death of their son in that context. It seems that just talking about the grave and its location is too matter of fact; she either wants to grieve alone or talk about her feelings toward the death of her son. After her husband/boyfriend tries to talk about their child and his grave, she feels suffocated in her home and is incline to leave. He then asks her not to go, but to talk to him about how she is feeling, but she does not believe that he knows how to talk to her about the child’s death, and thus, she does not give him the chance to try and understand. There is a barrier of conversation because the couple is grieving separately and in different ways. The woman is closed off to communication, but the husband just doesn’t seem to know what the right thing to say is. He says, “I do think, though, you overdo it a little.” This seems to be the absolute worst thing that he could say; this leads the reader to believe that his attachment to the child must have been much different than that of his wife’s, or in the time of loss, his way of coping is to try and move on and not dwell in the loss. The man goes on to say, “G-d, what a woman!” This again, is not remotely close to what would be appropriate to say. Neither the man nor the woman can put themselves in the other person’s shoes to understand the appropriate words to say. The phrase, “leap and leap in the air,/Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly” aptly explains the couple’s differing interpretations regarding the loss of their child. The woman interprets her husbands digging as something that was almost light-hearted, when really, the “leaping” of the dirt is out of his control. The repetition in the above lines seems to almost add agony, as if the digging of the grave will never end and thus the “wound” will always be open and the couple’s despair will never be quelled. The lightness of those two stanzas is ironic and almost inappropriate given the seriousness of Home Burial. However, I do think that it helps the reader to see the difference of interpretation between the man and the woman; it seems that the man can still find lightheartedness in his dealings, whereas the woman is continually pushed down by the death of her son (and understandably so). And then, he uses the fence metaphor; it seems that the man does not mean to be insensitive but his way of expressing his feelings is much different than the woman’s, and she is not in the right state of mind to understand what he is trying to communicate. In the final stanzas, it is clear that the man cares about his wife and wants to help her, but he is unsure how and all she wants to do is escape the pain of her home and the reminder of her dead son.