The Poem I Found Stashed in My Mother’s Book
It kept me connected to her years after she died, and even inspired my latest work
After my mother died, I found a typewritten poem stashed in a book that had belonged to her. I was grieving deeply, and the poem dealt equal blows tough love, and compassion. That dichotomy was not unfamiliar to me.
My mother loved me so fiercely, so unconditionally, that she’d sooner let me fail than rescue me. I’d learn best, she might have said, if I understood life as a case study in cause and effect. Reading the poem was like hearing my mother’s voice in my ears. And that felt healing.
The poem is attributed to Elsie Robinson, a name that was unfamiliar to me that day. I imagined she might have been a friend of my mother’s or perhaps a college classmate. She was neither.
Robinson, it turns out, was a nationally syndicated columnist for Hearst. She was so popular during her thirty-year run that she was once the media giant’s highest-paid female literary star. Readers would flip to her byline up to six times a week to get her brash and opinionated spin on current events. By various accounts, she reached an audience between fifty and sixty million.
I am now in the midst of writing my next book, the first biography of Robinson (1883–1956), alongside my friend and co-author, Julia Scheeres. We’ve learned that, through her writing, Robinson gave a voice to a generation of women who wanted more out of life than marriage, rearing children, and keeping house. All of this a decade before Gloria Steinem was born!
For a long time after my mother’s death, I felt completely unmoored. Robinson’s poem became a roadmap for living without her. I’d turn to it again and again — whenever I needed my mom’s reassurance that all the unease I felt without her was normal and that I’d grow beyond it. And I have.
Robinson’s poem has brought such comfort to me, and researching and writing her biography has created a new, living connection to my mother. It’s as if she’s sitting next to me as I work.
A quarter-century after discovering it, the poem remains vitally important to me. I’m in my home office right now, glancing at it, grinning, as I type these words.
Pain
by Elsie Robinson
Why must I be hurt?
Suffering and despair,
Cowardice and cruelty,
Envy and injustice,
All of these hurt.
Grief and terror,
Loneliness and betrayal
And the agony of loss or death —
All these things hurt.
Why? Why must life hurt?
Why must those who love generously,
Live honorably, feel deeply
All that is good — and beautiful
Be so hurt,
While selfish creatures
Go unscathed?
That is why —
Because they can feel.
Hurt is the price to pay for feeling.
Pain is not accident,
Nor punishment, nor mockery
By some savage god.
Pain is part of growth.
The more we grow
The more we feel —
The more we feel — the more we suffer,
For if we are able to feel beauty,
We must also feel the lack of it —
Those who glimpse heaven
Are bound to sight hell.
To have felt deeply is worth
Anything it cost.
To have felt Love and Honor,
Courage and Ecstasy
Is worth — any price.
And so — since hurt is the price
Of larger living, I will not
Hate pain, nor try to escape it.
Instead I will try to meet it
Bravely, bear it proudly:
Not as a cross, or a misfortune, but an
Opportunity, a privilege, a challenge — to the God that
gropes within me.
Allison Gilbert is the author of numerous books including Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive. On her popular grief and resilience blog, she features Q&A’s with some of the most notable names in our culture today, including Arianna Huffington, Jon Stewart, and bestselling authors Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Dani Shapiro, and Susan Orlean. She is co-editor of Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 and the official narrator of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s historical exhibition audio tour, the only female journalist to be so honored. Allison also writes for the New York Times and other publications.
To learn more about Robinson and keep up to date on the book’s progress, join Allison’s newsletter list. Visit www.allisongilbert.com and connect with Allison on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.
