Make Sense Of What It Means To Be Alive Poem Analysis

This poem made me feel really sad actually. I view death as a very sad thing, but at the same time it's sweet. Most of the time death is gentle, for it cradles the dying person to sleep. I don't know if that makes sense, but I've always thought that, and that's how I have coped with the passing of family members in the past few years. Stephen Dunn says that a sweetness "makes sense of what it means to be alive", and I agree. We take life for granted a lot of times, and we live without that sweetness. But once we truly feel the pain and emptiness of death and loss, that sweetness is gone until we can accept death as she comes. She is bittersweet.

This past summer, my great aunt passed away due to a car wreck. The section about the friend calling to say his lover was killed in a car he was driving reminded me of that accident. Hearing that she was in a terrible wreck too late hurt me, but thankfully she lived for two more days. That to me was the sweetness. She could have been taken away immediately without anyone to say goodbye to, but because of those two days, my family was able to say goodbye. …show more content…
He said that we should celebrate the life that people had, instead of mourning. The thing that stuck with me the most was that he said, "You can’t choose when tragedy strikes, but you can choose your response to it," and that is how I view death. This poem reminded me of that and of my great aunt.

Death is not easy to accept, but realizing that now that person doesn't have to suffer makes it easier. That to me is also