Afterglow

                                                                     Afterglow

I’d like the memory of me
to be a happy one,
I’d like to leave an afterglow
of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo
whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and laughing times
and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve,
to dry before the sun of happy memories
that I leave behind when day is done.

Authors Note: I am doing a text analysis on the poem “Afterglow” by “Helen Lowrie Marshall”. I will be comparing it to the movie “My Sisters Keeper”.

In the first two lines of this poem already sets the scene of wanting people who care about you to carry all the good memories that they had with you, and not think about the bad ones. Whenever someone leaves in any sort of way you try to remember them by good things. By these lines you don’t know whether the good memories with them will continue or whether they are stopping for good, either way they just want the reader to remember the good times they spent with one another to make them happy.

Later on in the poem it is saying that they want to leave behind good thoughts and leave peacefully when their life is done. No matter what happened they want people to think of them and be happy that they had this person in their lives, even if it was only meant. They don’t want people to be sad that they are gone, they want them to be happy that they were once there. They don’t want to be thought of as gone they want the memories of them keep them alive.

Like in the Movie “My Sisters Keeper” Anna, the younger sister of Kate who has cancer. And through her cancer, Anna was always there through everything and they would have fun all the time even though she was sick. Anna was Kate’s donor, so if Kate needed something they would take it from Anna’s body and put it in Kate’s. This poem relates to this movie because in the end Kate is ready to die and she is okay with it. Her mother wants to keep fighting the cancer though. Kate has to convince her mother to let her go. So like how the poem says they don’t want the people they love to be sad about them leaving, Kate wants her mom to set her free.

This poem tells you to be happy even when they are gone, but obviously no one is going to be happy, they will always be sad. No one wants to see someone they love to leave forever, but sometimes it’s better to let go of them and hold on to the memories with them. They always want them to be there with them through everything. It might hurt at the thought of them being gone, but no matter what their memories will live on forever.