The Goodbye Moments

This is the third in my series about goodbye.

We say “goodbye” to more than just people.

We say goodbye to belongings we love.

We say goodbye to seasons or changes in life. These are our goodbye moments.

We say goodbye to people who impact our life, and while some are sad, they also bring us joy.

Today, Wednesday, marks five weeks, since Corrie died suddenly on May 27, 2020. For the most part, I’ve done as well as can be expected. As I wrote yesterday, I’m so fortunate to have so many caring people around me, who will not let me slip. Wednesdays will be hard for a long time to come, but I try to remember Corrie as she’d want me to.

Corrie was the very definition of life. She was so happy, and beautiful from the inside out. The biggest tragedy I could do to her memory is to drown in misery because life must still continue. And, how my child loved life!

Goodbye hurts.

Goodbye also brings joy with its memories

Imagine when you laugh. Sometimes we laugh so hard it hurts. You know the spot in your gut where laughter hurts. There are other times we laugh so hard we end up crying. It has happened to me, too, when tears come out of my eyes. Goodbye can bring as much joy as pain.

It’s okay to remember goodbye to people, places, events and times of life.

I knew my daughter better than anyone else, except her father. She would not want me to turn on Sarah McLachlan and cry over her memory. That is not to say I don’t cry. I walked into my hair salon yesterday, and burst out crying because my hair stylist had on her Christian radio station. Then she made me laugh while I cried.

“Yeah, Corrie loved my music.”

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Corrie would want me to celebrate goodbye by jumping on a trampoline, then get off and eat a brownie without looking at the scale. This was my daughter.

We say goodbye to seasons in life. They make us ugly-cry-laugh. They take us on that emotional rollercoaster. It’s not like a newer one. The rollercoaster is more like the old wooden one my son went on last summer for his birthday. He got off walking like an old man. Hayes said, “My back hurts.”

He claimed it hurt the rest of the day.

I have had to say goodbye to a season of my life with Hayes. I said goodbye to the joy of my investigative reporter.

Prior to COVID-19 and E Learning, Corrie and Hayes were in the same after school program for the first time ever. She had turned five in December, and teachers were not sending her from the after school fours to the regular after school kids immediately.

“Mom, I’m five now,” she said. “It’s time for me to go upstairs.”

“Yes,” I said.

Corrie was so upset that she started to cry while I laughed.

“Mommy, they let the boys who are five go upstairs,” she said. “It’s my turn.”

“Sweetie, they’ll send you up there when they have room.”

Corrie argued for her rightful big girl place amongst the after school students, and how it wasn’t fair from her boy-filled class, she didn’t get to go. When she finally said her goodbye to the after school fours’ program, she became, as her teachers said, “a mother hen to her brother … She will not leave him alone.”

Hayes had moments when he messed with other kids by being logged into his own world, such as acting like a dinosaur. We were talking about social distancing before it became a thing because he would get too close to another child. Then the other kid reacted naturally. He got shoved. My little reporter told me everything because my son had started limiting the information I received from him about school and after school.

“Mommy, the big kids were picking on Hayes,” she said from the backseat.

“Hayes?”

“No one was picking on me, Mom. It’s fine.”

“That’s not true, Mom,” Corrie said. “One kid got his face and pushed him.”

“Was Hayes roaring?”

“Well, yes,” she said.

“Okay, there you go.”

“Mommy, I went up to that kid. I told them all, ‘Stop picking on Hayes. Leave him alone,'” Corrie said.

“What did the big kids do?”

“They did it again, Mommy,” she said with pretend shock in her voice. Her big blue eyes with a touch of green, just like her father’s, glared at me in the rearview mirror. “They told me, ‘You’re a little kid.'”

Corrie shared with me that she went after the big kids again before the after school teachers started separating the older kids from the younger kids because Corrie would not leave Hayes alone.

I feel the hole as Hayes returns to a summer program at the after school, so he can be around other kids. He’s stopped roaring as a dinosaur right now. I try to find what information I can from him by bribing him with food.

There are times we must say “goodbye” to moments and people in life, and celebrate those times we had. I will have to accept the information I can get out of Hayes as I say goodbye to the time I had my Hayes’ reporter.

By Rebecca T. Dickinson

When we Say Goodbye, Part I in my Goodbye Series

With my Goodbye, Mom, Your Walls will Fall Down, Part II in my Goodbye Series

I learned today July is Bereaved Parents Month.