The poem is built almost entirely from questions, the kind people ask when someone has lost a person they care about. It begins gently with "Are you ok?" and "Do you want to talk?", then moves to more probing ones: where he died, whether he was in pain, how long the speaker knew him. The title, "Pamela," suggests she is the one being questioned, though she never answers on the page.
That silence is the heart of it. We only hear the people around her, and their questions pile up, becoming more intrusive. The last lines, "Do you …?" and "Was he…?", trail off unfinished, as if even the askers run out of words, or as if the questions could go on forever. The mood is tense and uneasy, and a little suffocating. The care in the questions is real, but so is the pressure they put on someone who is grieving. Judging by the form, the poem suggests that grief can leave a person unheard, surrounded by words but unable to reply.