“Your Death” by Rita Dove

“Your Death,” a poem by Rita Dove that describes the everyday details leading up to receiving the news about a loved one’s passing.
Credit: Anthony Delanoix via Unsplash

On the day that will always belong to you,

lunar clockwork had faltered

and I was certain. Walking

the streets of Manhattan I thought:

Remember this day. I felt already

like an urn, filling with wine.

Upon reading the first line of this poem by Poet Laureate Rita Dove, the reader doesn’t exactly know why the day will always belong to the you in question, or what will happen, but the title gives a clue. A “faltering lunar clockwork” and a vague certainty (“I was certain”) gently invites the reader into her world. 

She then localizes the experience by describing a walk through Manhattan. “Remember this day” creates a foreboding feeling, and the choice of an “urn, filling with wine” (as opposed to flask, bottle, or vessel) points towards something funerary and sacred. 

To celebrate, your son and I

took a stroll through Bloomingdale’s

where he developed a headache

among the copper skillets and

tiers of collapsible baskets.

Pain tracked us through

the china, driving us

finally to the subway

and home,

Dove then illustrates the location by describing a trip through Bloomingdale’s. The reader now knows that the poem’s recipient/subject is a father and that she’s not alone on this trip. The first stanza’s foreboding develops further in the second stanza with the son’s headache that is “track[ing] us through the china.” 

All of the mundane details mentioned here serve to create an indelible experience; they may be specific to her experience, but they are universal in that on such a day, people tend to remember random, quotidian things. 

where the phone was ringing

with bad news. Even now,

my new daughter

asleep in the crib, I can’t shake

the moment his headache stopped

and the day changed ownership.

I felt robbed. Even the first

bite of the tuna fish sandwich

I had bought at the corner

became yours.

Finally, we learn that on this day, she learned of her beloved’s death, and that previous feeling of dread comes to fruition with the unfortunate news. Compared to the first and second stanzas, there seems to be an even greater attention to daily details in the third as we get glimpses into a home life with “my new daughter asleep in the crib,” not being able to “shake the moment his headache stopped” and “the first bite of the tuna fish sandwich [she] had bought at the corner store became yours.” It almost feels as though there has been a gradual build-up of everyday details that allows the reader to connect more with each stanza. “I felt robbed” serves as a declaration of how grief comes into one’s life and steals a sense of psychological stability from the bereaved.

A portrait of Rita Dove
Credit: University of Virginia

Such is the nature of memory on difficult days. An enormous trauma like the death of a loved one often causes us to remember the details as a means of psychologically hanging on.

And yet, we still feel like something has been taken from us (because someone has).