“So this child stands sentinel by the roadside With doll and lamb in a brown study, waiting For a transcendent school bus to carry her away. The nervous parents avoid each other’s eyes, Hoping she’ll make the heavenly grade.” (Seelye)

“I am Effie, visible and invisible, 

remembering and remembered.” (Rich)

Both of the poems about the Mourning Picture seem to revolve around death, and in particular the death of children. I feel like both of these quotes mend well together. In the first quote from Seelye it has the child as waiting for school, which as the poem reads is allegorical to death, the school being heaven, the bus being death, and the grade being the final passage to heaven itself. Only the parents stick out in this quote, being completely devoid from the situation occurring, or ignoring what is happening, possibly lending to the cause of the child’s death. In the second quote from Rich although it is quite short it means a lot. The child is most likely dead due to earlier context in the poem, and in this quote it further lends to that assumption. The description of being visible and invisible causes me to think of a ghost-like figure being the invisible form and a physical body being the visible form, in the poem it says the parents are dressed in black, presumably after a funeral. The word choice of remembering makes me think of how people tend to have their “life flash before their eyes” and also how people in purgatory are often stuck to unfinished business on Earth. The author using remembered mends well with the thought that a funeral had just occurred or that the parents are recently mourning due to the child’s death, which as any normal person would do is try to remember good memories. 

When people die, how long does the effects of their death last on the people closest to them, like parents, siblings, significant others? At what point do memories of people, who have passed, lose their potency on those that are remembering them?