The Day of the Dead

My senior English teacher, Ms. Koepsel [kep suhl], made my class memorize the following Emily Dickinson poem:

They say that ‘time assuages’ —
Time never did assuage —
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age —

Time is a Test of Trouble —
But not a Remedy —
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady.

She told us an easy way to do it was to sing it to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” I was seventeen. I didn’t understand the poem. I didn’t agree with or believe the poem. We never had a test on it other than having to write it once from memory on a blank piece of paper with no assistance. We did not discuss it in class. We did not analyze it. We wrote no essays about it.

For many other reasons, we all thought Ms. Koepsel was kind of crazy. She was in her fifties, trim, short salt and pepper hair, always wearing sandals and denim dresses. She had a kind of wild look in her eyes. She told risqué jokes. When she handed papers back, she would lean in too close and look me in the eye and tell me my writing was fine but had no heat, and she wanted the heat. She laughed a lot. She gossiped about the kids. Very few of the other teachers were her friends.

November 1 is el Día de Los Muertos—the Day of the Dead. As it happened, I was in Utah on business. Fifteen years and eight months ago, I was the head pallbearer that bore my father’s casket to an open plot on a hill in Orem City Cemetery.

After my work meetings, I headed from Salt Lake City to Orem and spent an hour with my dad.

Emily and Mrs. Koepsel are right: time never did assuage.