Mechelle offers some wisdom and balance when she asks, "How should we view N.C. State’s decision?"

When writing about Kay Yow’s death in January, I used a passage from the uplifting Robert Frost poem, “The Tuft of Flowers.” To paraphrase, it was about how people can work together even when apart.

But there is another Frost poem that comes to mind when trying to sort through feelings about how N.C. State and its women’s basketball program is proceeding after her death. It is a very different sort of poem - a doleful, brooding, tragic one called, “Home Burial.”

A mother is deeply grieving the death of her baby son while also furious with her husband, whose way to deal with his grief is to not acknowledge it. The woman is, in general, profoundly angry about the nature of grief, how the living are expected to pass through their sadness and continue on. In her state of mind, this is a betrayal of the dead.