Grief is the Thing with Feathers

The title of Part 3, “Permission to Leave,” raises two central questions: Who is giving permission, and who is asking for it (or alternatively, who is leaving)? The most literal interpretation of this title connects directly to Crow, who leaves the family home. In fact, Crow himself is the one who utters the words, “Permission to leave, I’m done” (103), in his final speaking section, suggesting that he is the one who is leaving. However, at the same time that he is permitting Crow to leave, Dad is in the process of finding closure over the loss of Mum, thereby letting her go. He tries his very best to resist this inevitable part of the grieving process, reflecting the continuation of The Emotional Turmoil of Grief. He notes, “Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix,” (99). Nevertheless, by the end of the story, it seems that Dad has emerged from the depths of his grief and inevitably loosens the bonds with his late wife as a result. In this sense, the narrative indicates that another interpretation of the section’s title is that Dad is giving Mum permission to leave. A final interpretation is that Crow is permitting Dad to leave him and Ted behind, supported by the scene where Dad’s publisher tells him to move on to a new writing subject; when Dad returns home, Crow is gone.

Even though Crow departs from the house, he has a vestigial presence in the family’s life. For example, as an adult, one of the boys says, “I tell tales of our family friend, the crow. My wife shakes her head. She thinks it’s weird that I fondly remember family holidays with an imaginary crow” (101). His son even makes Crow’s signature “KRAA!” noise every time he sees a wild crow. This episode frames the memory of Crow in a positive light, but in another moment, one of the boys reveals the resentment he feels over memories of the bird: “The terrible years of my life were stained crow” (97). Crow is inextricably associated with the loss of their mother and cannot, therefore, be dissociated from that pain.

Crow stays with Dad in little ways as well. In the conversation between the two characters on Page 101, they speak retrospectively about Dad’s grieving process, as if visiting with one another once again after a long time. Crow tells Dad, “You’ll remember with some of my early work with you, that what appeared to be primal corvid vulgarity was in fact a highly articulated care programme, designed to respond to the nuances of your recovery” (101), returning to the theme of Caretaking During Bereavement. This elevated, academic manner of speaking is vastly different from Crow’s usual working-class vernacular and more closely resembles Dad’s normal manner of speech. In this way, the narrative continues to develop the idea of Crow as a manifestation or aspect of Dad, reflecting Crow’s identity as part of Dad’s internal world.

The final episode of Grief, in which the family scatters Mum’s ashes, symbolizes the official closure of their grieving process. As Dad throws the ashes to the wind, he both literally and metaphorically lets go of Mum. Despite his earlier reticence about “moving on,” he is rewarded for letting go with the realization that his children are “the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything” (116). In this way, Mum returns to him in the very moment at which he is resigned to being apart from her, defining a parallel between the liberation of Mum’s ashes and the liberation of Dad from his grief, which reflects the multi-faceted meaning of Part 3’s title. Porter’s decision to end the novel this way provides closure to the story’s central conflict of the family’s struggles with grief, but it also remains open-ended about what the future holds for both Dad and the boys. Although brief glimpses into the boys’ adult lives have been provided in Part 3, the narrative doesn’t confirm the reality of these scenes, leaving their meaning ambiguous.