Dickinson did not attend her father's burial, and, according to the “Letters,” she never visited his grave, though her siblings did. A friend of hers, Elizabeth Holland, picked a sprig of clover from the grave and gave it to Emily, who pressed it between the pages of her Bible.

During the 1880s Dickinson also endured the loss of several close friends – Charles Wadsworth, Judge Otis P. Lord, and Helen Hunt Jackson – and several family members, including Gib and her mother.