With my Goodbye, Mom, Your Walls will Fall Down

This is the second in a six part blog series about goodbye.

In times of tragedy, friends and family say more with goodbye than we could ever imagine.

With her final goodbye, Corrie busted up my walls I’d built around me over a period of six years.

Corrie was a more social creature than I had been because I’d closed myself off from other adults. I understood kids, but, as I learned one month before Corrie died, I’d undergone neurological testing from 1990 to 1991.

I was five-years-old, Corrie’s age.

My mother wanted me to be treated as normally as possible, so they did not seek further testing because autism was in its infancy in the 1990s. (I have never blamed my parents for this as it was very common in the 1990s to leave a child undiagnosed due social fears.)

There were times I found myself in an awkward social situation where maybe I didn’t do the normal social function, or a conversation took longer to process.

I internalized everything. When I said or did something seemingly socially different, I played it over and over in my mind like a rerun you cannot stop because I could not stand to hurt anyone. When other parents openly confronted my husband or I about Hayes’s early behaviors connected with his autism, I shut myself off a little more.

Imagine someone looked for a new house. The realtor believed the best homes existed in neighborhoods with paved sidewalks.  Every house had the exact same distance between them. At 10 a.m. on Saturday mornings, homeowners would mow their lawns. They submitted plans for the backyard gardens to the homeowners association and waited for approval. Everyone knew the correct type of weed eater to use for the natural green pests. In this neighborhood, everyone used the exact same type of fence.  This was the neurotypical brain.”

excerpt from my original memoir focused on autism and atypical minds called a messed up kind of beautiful

I felt alone, but I became okay with being alone with my family. It no longer bothered me because I did not want to reveal all the monsters inside my closet. How could I say goodbye to friends I still loved when I was not ready to say hello?

It went against everything Corrie was a part of because she was very social and smart. I did take her to meet friends, but kept the wall up.

Corrie loved me exactly as I was, and she embraced every part of life. She never wanted to say goodbye to me. At night, she’d say, “One more hug,” or “One more kiss.” In fact, we had a book we read that was always “one more” of something.

I had a few friends who politely did not want to get together. I had to spare my emotions, so I put up a wall and said “goodbye.” I could not change the neuroatypical in me anymore than I could my son.

Everyone wanted 

Alice without 

the wonderland.  

If I saw Neverland, 

they wanted me

to leave and declare

before all that it was 

impossible to fly.

Sparkle dust and 

rabbits with gloves 

were fairy stories meant 

for a very short time. 

EXCERPT FROM cHAPTER 1 OF A messed up kind of beautiful

I had friends, but in some cases I had shut myself down so much I could not see the sun in the reflection of the lake. I became worse last year the more mentally and physically sick I became.

Not many people knew how physically sick I’d become in April 2019. Some knew the mental effect. I struggled to walk, and for about three weeks, my weight dropped because I stopped eating. My immune system was severely weakened, and it struggled to battle off my third bout of Shingles along with a viral infection (pre-COVID 19).

Fever would come and go from the Shingles and the viral infection that would not go away. My doctor was extremely upset.

She said, “You’re going to end up in the hospital if I don’t write you out the rest of the year.”

I’d been with the same group of students for two years. Teachers had come and gone, and I was determined I would make it to the end.

And I did.

I did the shut down and said my quiet goodbyes to everyone by that point because I didn’t want them to see me. I was going to spaces to hide in crowds or I’d cover my head and start rocking if noises were too loud.

The daisies grow on

the fields of France,

but the mines;

barbed wire

still dwell

in the dirt.

‘I will not be the same

as I was before,’ I say …”

“Daisies on the field of fRANCE” POEM BY REBECCA T. DICKINSON

During my recovery last year, I had to start rebuilding myself. There are goodbyes I wanted to say, especially to the students I was with for two years, and the ones I never got to say to my students this year because Corrie died one week before school officially ended.

I really loved my old school.

Corrie knew this.

But my heart was broken, and my body had so internalized my emotions that my health was falling apart.

I have time for the sinners,

but none for the saints.

No holy water,

whispered words

wrapped in golden foil

for the fried chicken

after service ends.

I have no words for sinners

for nightmares wait beneath

the shattered silence after

the midnight hour meets

my kids on Luska road

where they cast off

Cinderella dreams …”

Excerpt from my poem “No wORDS FOR sinners”

In all the time my mental and physical health broke down, I never stopped being a mother to my children. It was my greatest calling. They were my greatest art. I’d said goodbye to everyone and everything else, but never to my kids.

With Corrie’s final goodbye, all the walls fell down.

If you imagine that cinematic moment at the end of the battle when the bad guys are swept away, that is what happened.

Only now I am not alone and cannot hide. It doesn’t matter what exposure people have to my atypical mind.

Friends and my family have supported Hayes, John and I from taking down tornado debris of our barn to get out his tractor. They have brought plants for Corrie’s Memorial Garden, momentos and statues. Friends have brought dinners, or come to socialize.

When I think about where I was just over one year ago when the doctor said, “If you weren’t going to a new place, I’d tell you to leave this career now,” I am so grateful I found a school that has so embraced myself, my children and now the memory of Corrie. I am so glad I never said goodbye to my current career.

This post is dedicated to all my friends, co-workers past and present, and my family that always understood what family meant.

When we Say Goodbye, Part 1 in my Goodbye Series

Post, all excerpts and photos by Rebecca T. Dickinson. All writing is copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson 2018-2020.