Death of Emily Dickinson

The end of Emily Dickinson's life was full of grief. In April 1882, a minister she befriended named Charles Wadsworth died and, six months later, her mother died. A little over a year later, her favorite nephew died too. In March 1884, her friend Otis Phillips Lord (a judge, whom some speculate may have been a romantic interest) died. Dickinson wrote, "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."

On May 15, 1886, Dickinson herself died of a form of kidney disease called Bright's disease. She was 55 years old. She requested that all her letters be burned; she left no specific instructions about her manuscript poems, which were found later. Few had ever been published.

Her funeral was held in the library at the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her white coffin was decorated with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a Lady's Slipper orchid, and blue field violets. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the editor from whom she sought advice on her writing, read the poem "No Coward Soul Is Mine" by Emily Brontë. He had previously met her only twice but would become her greatest booster posthumously. She was buried in the family plot at West Cemetery in Amherst (pictured). The greater controversy over her poems was yet to come.

Her poems were heavily edited then re-edited posthumously, before later being restored. Her poems are usually without titles and today are often referred to by a numbering system. This one was numbered XXXI. in a 1924 edition:

Death is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
I have another trust."

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.