So I Write

There are lessons Emily Post, an etiquette author until her death in the mid-twentieth century, never taught us.

There are times we rise,

or times we fall.

Sometimes we sink to our knees and rise again during different stages of grief, so I write.

My worst fear about writing poetry, memoir or essay was not: what will others think? It was the fear I’d forget her voice, so I write.

One of the first poems I put on the blog after Corrie’s death did not make some in the world happy. I did not expect it to, but I stopped caring the moment men put my daughter in the ground. I did not come to make everyone happy, but to write …

Write about Corrie, so I paint her life in words.

I used to think some members would come around in my husband’s family, but one openly rejected the children.

But I wrote, and got it out.

My son cried the other day at breakfast. It clicked. He didn’t cry over those he never knew. Hayes cried over his sister. The only one he knew. The only one that mattered.

He said, “Everything is different now.”

Yes, it is son, so I write.

“How am I supposed to be now?”

I don’t know, son, so I write.

I stopped and remembered something my aunt told me we she went to the store, “We have always been blessed with our family.”

You’re right even though I pulled away for a long time. You are the family that was there.

This weekend, family and friends surrounded us as we took down a barn to get to a tractor out for Corrie’s Memorial Garden. I saw the number, so I write.

Thank you for being there.

When considering the opinion of a few as I write, I know this: my daughter was loved by her family. She was loved by my friends. She knew her father for his true self. She was adored by her teachers, so I write.

When I stop to consider the opinion of a few, I remember this: they were not there when I pumped my daughter’s chest as she went into cardiac arrest,

so I write.

When I stop to consider what others think, I remember those who blew bubbles with us from containers of blue, yellow and red at my daughter’s funeral.

So I write.

My husband came up with his own short verse:

They think me a clown.

That’s not the right noun.

What I’m feeling is bound

after they buried my 

daughter in the ground.

So we write.

Poem by John

Post by Rebecca T. Dickinson