Elegy- Julian Perry

No Children, No Pets

BY SUE ELLEN THOMPSON

I bring the cat’s body home from the vet’s

in a running-shoe box held shut

with elastic bands. Then I clean

the corners where she has eaten and

slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food

from the baseboard, dumping the litter

and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic

dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-

soaked towel I put in the trash. I put

the catnip mouse in the box and I put

the box away, too, in a deep

dirt drawer in the earth.

When the death-energy leaves me,

I go to the room where my daughter slept

in nursery school, grammar school, high school,

I lie on her milky bedspread and think

of the day I left her at college, how nothing

could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax

out from between her floorboards,

or taking a razor blade to the decal

that said to the firemen, “Break

this window first.” I close my eyes now

and enter a place that’s clearly

expecting me, swaddled in loss

and then losing that, too, as I move

from room to bone-white room

in the house of the rest of my life.

     This poem by Sue Ellen Thompson follows a mother's experience after the loss of her cat, using all three elements of an elegy (lament, admiration, and consolation). A sense of detachment is portrayed at first, hinting at a state of shock and overwhelming sadness felt by the narrator. The author purposefully stays vague in using "the cat" and instead of calling the cat by its name, as well as giving details about the shoe box holding the cat's body to show this feeling, which creates a sorrowful tone. This detached feeling fades with the second paragraph's beginning. "When the death-energy leaves..." the narrator, she is left with memories of her own daughter's childhood which reflects the loving relationship she had with the cat. The narrator reminisces about events that had changed her daughter's life and her own, similar to how the narrator's own life has changed as a result of the cat passing away. Surely there is sadness, but she chooses to remember how much love they once shared instead. She chooses to remember the good. The final element of an elegy pokes through at the end, as the narrator states "I close my eyes now and enter a place that's clearly expecting me..." The calm has washed over her, and her memories have consoled her sadness. Ending on this note, the poem is trying to give the reader a feeling of hope and happiness in such a bleak time seemingly without feeling. The message that one should appreciate what love they have had in their life ties this poem together, as the narrator experiences this appreciation and betters herself for having had it.