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Waking—I, on Earth, He in Sky

Prescient of her losses to come, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (1890) “Isobel’s Child” describes a woman holding her gravely ill baby. For eight days, at the nexus of life and death, she pleads with God to spare her child. Then, one night, her son comes to her in a dream. He has grown to maturity and entreats her, Mother, mother, let me go, so he may return to the heaven of heaven. At the end of her journey from desperation to resignation, the mother relinquishes him, and she and her child part, We are waking—he and I—I, on earth, and he, in sky (pp. 295-314). Most of those embedded in the Western medical matrix are able to avoid the early loss that Barrett Browning experienced herself. In a fraction of the world, infant deaths have been engineered into a rarity. But, as a species that frequently lives with others who have considerably shorter lifespans, we are inevitably confronted with the reality of death and separation sooner than later. Budgies, White Rats, Rabbits, and Goldfish generally live less than a few years; on the odd occasion, Cats and Dogs may stretch to two decades; and, while it