Sitting with Death in Keats' Bedroom

Or, how to keep house while dying 💀

Cat vomiting, hose faucets on, children mortally wounded—all the while, summer break is only a week away.

Here is the original that inspired this comic:

from Christine de Pizan’s famous work, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames circa 1410-5. I don’t have access to the full original manuscript, so I have no idea what’s going on here, but whatever it is, it looks like a bad time.

Jon was, cruelly, out of town this weekend. (I joke—he needs and deserves time away, just like anyone). I’ve been keeping the household together, mostly. For many years now, we’ve divvied up the household chores equally, so these days when Jon is gone, I feel the pinch.

Doing two jobs in one body is no joke.

We met in college, Jon and I. He was a tutor at the writing center, and I got a job there a few months after him. We graduated with twin English degrees at around the same time, then went to the same graduate program. We shared a cubicle in the carrels, our own alternating office space for thesis writing and meetings with students. We were identical, inseparable, and hardly a thing changed when we got married halfway through my first graduate degree.

Then I got pregnant.

two babies getting graduate degrees. (I’m also 8 mos pregnant under that robe.)

Almost immediately, I took on more of the tactile parenting than Jon. What else was possible? My body ballooned into a container for someone else’s life, and that persisted for years after, despite giving birth. I was the default parent, at first by necessity (boobs) and then by habit.

It didn’t help that I grew up inside a religion that diminished my future over and over again, especially during those years when I was supposed to be conjuring up dreams. When I was a teenager, I believed that nothing I could do in this life would be as important or true as holding space for my future children. I was put on this earth to be their container—any attempt to become something else was selfish and spiritually shortsighted.

This wasn’t something my parents taught me. They always told to be myself and to pursue what I wanted—hobbies, talents, career, etc.

At the same time, I was a devoted follower of the Mormon prophet. When he said that the most important thing a teenage girl could do was prepare for motherhood, I took that seriously. Sure, I could choose to have a career—I could also choose to drink beer on a Sunday or bare my pornographically suggestive shoulders in front of the menfolk. It was technically up to me, but the way this choice was presented, it was obvious which one was correct.

When it came time to choose a career, I didn’t. I stayed home with my kids and kept house.

This is not to say that I mastered the domestic arts. I tried, but my attempts were always half-hearted. House and schedule keeping do not come naturally to me, nor to anyone in my family of origin. And unlike other skills, learning to keep house does not soften easily with practice. At least, not for me. I hope that in some universe there’s an evolved version of me who’s able to mindfully wash a dish, or savor the gesture of sweeping a floor with simple, unhurried zen. But for the me that exists in this universe, cleaning house feels like wading through a bog with no shore ahead.

So—without much of a plan, and with far too much on my plate, our house was always messy. And things—important things—were always slipping through the cracks. I let the dishes pile up, the laundry pile up, the flyers and invitations and notices pile up. I forgot lunches and permission slips, school holidays and class parties. I even missed my oldest’s kindergarten graduation (which, looking back, was perhaps not as much a loss as I felt then). But when he came home with a little paper graduation cap on, asking why I was the only mom who wasn’t there, I cried.

my adorable kid many years ago after the kindergarten graduation I never saw, with the cupcake I gave him to assuage my guilt

I no longer have regrets about who I was or what I didn’t do when I was a young parent. I was a gifted writer and an enthusiastic intellectual, but entering the tactile world of parenting young children and keeping house, I was tossed into a deep end with no rope. And that’s where I stayed—floundering, treading so much water for over a decade.

I wasn’t happy—neither was Jon. I had some time to write—during nap times and the occasional kid swap—but mostly I was tired, with a cloudy head and so much to do that I could rarely sink into the kind of deep work that I needed.

Jon, who worked full-time, also had to sacrifice his own creativity doing work he didn’t care about, just so we could keep our healthcare and pay our bills. He was tired and disconnected and had almost no involvement in taking care of the kids’ daily needs.

The American dream.

We made lots of course corrections over the years—some by choice, others by necessity (when I was hit by a bus and couldn’t walk, we had to re-arrange our entire lifestyle). With each shift, my life expanded into something spacious and colorful, a place where I actually exist and matter. Jon had never asked me to give up these things, but I did anyway—in part because of my religious upbringing, and in part because I had no idea that there was another way to do it.

Now, we’re in a place where we both do what needs doing—for our family, but also for ourselves.

It’s been a long time in the making.

Four years ago, Jon and I took a trip to Rome. It was our ten year anniversary, and we’d always regretted not going when we were in college in Europe during our two stints abroad. For an itinerary, I put “visit John Keats apartment” on the top of our list—it was a pilgrimage I somehow knew I needed to make. This was where Keats spent the final weeks of his short life—on his deathbed in a fit of consumption, with the famous Spanish steps outside his window.

the marble staircase leading up to Keats’ apartment, with the Spanish Steps outside

Inside the apartment, a marble staircase winds upward from the street in a kind of squared spiral, angling in on itself over and over as it ascends towards Keats’ rooms—the exalted center of the labyrinth. With each flight of steps, the sounds of the city grow fainter. Once you reach the top, the bustle outside is only a soft din—like a dinner party in a distant room of the house—all that life and laughter clattering on elsewhere without you.

In Keats’ room there is a window, and near the window, a deathbed with a single chair beside it. It isn’t the deathbed that belonged to Keats, but it’s a potent reminder of the thing itself—filling the room with its emptiness.

Keats’ room with Rome below

For a long time, I was the only one in Keats’ room. I sat in the chair near his deathbed. In my lap, I held a laminated selection of poems and letters, but I didn’t need to read them. I could recite plenty by heart. Instead of reading, I sat very still and listened. Beyond the room, I could hear the scrum of life outside the open window—the chatter of birds and tourists—laughter and shouting, the occasional rev of a vespa on the streets.

But mostly what filled the room was silence.

Keats was 25 when he died—almost a decade younger than I was when I sat alone at his deathbed. I thought of all he’d done, knowing he wasn’t long for this world. I held most of his legacy in my lap, laminated and held together by a key ring for easy access.

And what had I done? Beyond the dailiness of being in the lives of my children, my family, my friends, what had I done? I knew there was dignity in living a small and simple life, so what was this ache that broke through in moments of quiet stillness?

Was my life meant to slip in and out of the room like a silent guest, or was I somehow missing the point by never taking time for the things I wanted to do?

I felt the weight of all the hours I’d spent in crisis, tending to other fires that weren’t my own. I was never quiet or alone enough to fix in myself what needed fixing, and it took me a trip halfway around the world before I got there, away from our children and our house—our life amassed in endless, un-sortable piles—to sit with death, just as Keats had done.

As I sat, I felt the world tilt, and all the contents shift.

From then on, I knew change was imminent. I didn’t fix my life in that room—I didn’t even make a plan or arrange childcare or demand a divorce (which would’ve been a mistake, anyway). But I left Keats’ apartment feeling lighter, more clear-headed than I had in years.

Later on, we visited Keats’ grave. I brought a notebook along and filled the thing up with scribbles—a spillage of words and drawings, things that hadn’t come spontaneously to me in years. And every now and then, I felt that same quiet wash over me, like I was back in Keats’ room, sitting alone with death.

Keats’ grave, which doesn’t have his name, but just the inscription: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water

Every person on this earth deserves time and space to sit with death. As a young parent and a failing homemaker, death was something I almost never got to see. I was underwater, so how could I come to the surface long enough to meet its eyes and not look away?

I’m glad Jon is coming home today. The house is, predictably, undone. There’s simply too much for one person to do and I don’t feel apologetic or ashamed about it. Some things (the cat vomit!) I’ll tend to before he gets home, and others (the dishes!) I’ll leave for him to catch up on.

Before I go, I will say this—I know it’s rare for an unemployed woman with children to have a partner who shares every household duty equally. I’ve met maybe two women for whom this is a reality, even in this the year of our lord 2023. Because it’s so rare, you might expect me to shower my partner with praise for his hard work. But while I appreciate what he does, I will never wax poetic on his ability to do household work or take care of our kids.

Why? Because a home life split evenly is a baseline, not a luxury. Yes, I’ll give my partner credit for rising to the occasion, for choosing to live a life where we both could thrive, a life for which there are few functional models. He’s capable and hardworking, as any adult should be. I rely on him endlessly—and yes, I’m glad he’s not an asshole.

But I won’t rhapsodize on anyone—male, female, or other—for doing their fair share of work. The labor expectations of gender might be the heaviest baggage I’ve got, and I find myself endlessly rehashing how I got here so I can unpack those narratives again and again. Hopefully, if my partner and I unpack them well enough, we won’t pass them on to the next.

So thank you for being here, my friends. I hope there’s time and space for you these days, especially if you’re home with little ones You deserve to sit with your own mortality, and to nurture whatever grows from it.

I love you, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Yours ever,

💀Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian💀