Essay Questions

What was the original inspiration for Frye's poem?

Frye was originally inspired to write the poem by a good friend of hers who had fled to America when Hitler came to power in her native Germany; as a Jewish woman, she found that it was no longer safe for her to stay there. Her mother, however, had stayed, and when news of her death reached her daughter, her daughter felt tremendous guilt, and shame that she had not been present either when her mother died, or at her funeral, because she felt that in order to pay tribute to her mother she should be weeping at her grave.

Frye wanted to ease her friend's pain and guilt and so wrote the poem to explain that her friend could still have a living connection with her mother and that she did not have to stand by a slab of stone in order to honor or remember her. By giving her other places where she could think about her mother, and pay tribute to their love, she was hoping that the guilt her friend was feeling would lessen, even though the hole created by the loss of her mother would never get any smaller.

How does Frye describe the next life?

Frye describes the next life almost as part of the natural world. Each example that the friend's mother - the poem's narrator - gives as a way in which her daughter can still feel her presence are connected deeply to natural forces, such as the wind, the snow and the stars. They are also constants; it will be windy at some point, it will snow and there will always be starry nights.

Comparing her soul to the stars at night is also a heavenly metaphor; the light of the stars seems to shine down from Heaven and there has long been a magical element to stars as well, for example, they have the power to grant wishes when we wish upon them. Frye describes the next life as having an almost magical element to it, which is what can also maintain the connection between her friend and her mother after her death.