Editing Emily Dickinson (section)

=== Decline and death ===
Although she continued to write in her last years, Dickinson stopped editing and organizing her poems. She also exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers.<ref>Habegger (2001), 604.</ref> Lavinia, who never married, remained at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.

[[File:EmilyDickinsonGrave-color.jpg|thumb|left|Emily Dickinson's tombstone in the family plot]]
The 1880s were a difficult time for the remaining Dickinsons. Irreconcilably alienated from his wife, Austin fell in love in 1882 with [[Mabel Loomis Todd]], an Amherst College faculty wife who had recently moved to the area. Todd never met Dickinson but was intrigued by her, referring to her as "a lady whom the people call the ''Myth''".<ref>Walsh (1971), 26.</ref> Austin distanced himself from his family as his affair continued and his wife became sick with grief.<ref>Habegger (2001), 612.</ref> Dickinson's mother died on November 14, 1882. Five weeks later, Dickinson wrote, "We were never intimate&nbsp;... while she was our Mother&nbsp;– but Mines in the same Ground meet by tunneling and when she became our Child, the Affection came."<ref>Habegger (2001), 607.</ref> The next year, Austin and Susan's third and youngest child, Gilbert—Emily's favorite—died of [[typhoid fever]].<ref>Habegger (2001), 615.</ref>

As death succeeded death, Dickinson found her world upended. In the fall of 1884, she wrote, "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."<ref>Habegger (2001), 623.</ref> That summer, she had seen "a great darkness coming" and fainted while baking in the kitchen. She remained unconscious late into the night and weeks of ill health followed. On November 30, 1885, her feebleness and other symptoms were so worrying that Austin canceled a trip to Boston.<ref>Habegger (2001), 625.</ref> She was confined to her bed for a few months, but managed to send a final burst of letters in the spring. What is thought to be her last letter was sent to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross, and simply read: "Little Cousins, Called Back. Emily".<ref>Wolff (1986), 534.</ref> On May 15, 1886, after several days of worsening symptoms, Dickinson died at the age of 55. Austin wrote in his diary that "the day was awful&nbsp;... she ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the [afternoon] whistle sounded for six."<ref name="Hab627">Habegger (2001), 627.</ref> Dickinson's chief physician gave the cause of death as [[Bright's disease]] and its duration as two and a half years.<ref>Habegger (2001), 622.</ref>

Lavinia and Austin asked Susan to wash Dickinson's body upon her death. Susan also wrote Dickinson's obituary for the ''Springfield Republican'', ending it with four lines from one of Dickinson's poems: "Morns like these, we parted; Noons like these, she rose; Fluttering first, then firmer, To her fair repose." Lavinia was perfectly satisfied that Susan should arrange everything, knowing it would be done lovingly.<ref>Smith (1998), 265.</ref> Dickinson was buried, laid in a white coffin with [[Heliotropium arborescens|vanilla-scented heliotrope]], a [[lady's slipper]] [[Orchidaceae|orchid]], and a "knot of blue field [[Viola (plant)|violets]]" placed about it.<ref name="Parker" /><ref name="Wolff 1986, 535">Wolff (1986), 535.</ref> The funeral service, held in the Homestead's library, was simple and short; Higginson, who had met her only twice, read "No Coward Soul Is Mine", a poem by [[Emily Brontë]] that had been a favorite of Dickinson's.<ref name="Hab627" /> At Dickinson's request, her "coffin [was] not driven but carried through fields of buttercups" for burial in the family plot at [[Amherst West Cemetery|West Cemetery]] on Triangle Street.<ref name="Farr3to6">Farr (2005), 3–6.</ref>