The Four Gifts that Keep Me Going

When people ask me what keeps me going during my grief of Corrie, there are four things:

1. As the Aaron Burr’s character sings in Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”

After Corrie earned her wings, I planned a memoir.

I have the first chapter written.

But line after line kept—and keeps—coming into my mind causing me to write like I am running out of time.

I have always written through difficult circumstances, but I’ve never had anything quite like this. It is the answer to Corrie’s question: “Mommy, do you write about me?”

Constantly.

“If I call you ‘Juliet,’

will you come to a

balcony made in part …”

Opening line from “If I Call you juliet” by rebecca t. Dickinson

The line above was in my mind for two days before I wrote the full poem.

Not including some poems I wrote here on Corrie’s Season, I have a total of twenty three.

With only so much time to write, I am placing a priority on a collection of poems over the memoir.

2. People ask me “How is Hayes?”

This is the most important drive for me as a person and parent. I cannot lie down in
grief because it would be the greatest insult to Corrie’s memory.

She loved greatly. Corrie loved her father and me dearly, but I think she loved her brother more than any person in this world.

While Hayes’s diagnosis from early childhood sometimes required more attention, I tried to treat both equally.    

In December, I took Corrie to the mall to look at things she might want for Christmas, and to see Frozen 2. Hayes happened to be with my parents’ that weekend. They took him to see it.

I took Hayes to the mall one week later by himself, and we ate lunch together instead of seeing a movie.

I followed an all important principle: “What I do for one child, I do for the other.”

So, how is Hayes?

I plan to write an entirely new post about him as he is an essential part of Corrie’s Season, but he is doing well. He is going through times when he is emotional, mostly at night and he remembers how he and Corrie would watch movies or look at books on his bed because I was—and am—so opposed to video games.

He attends a camp during the week, so he can be around other kids. We are working through when he asks another kid to “be his his brother.”

He does not carry on long conversations with people, and like I did, put up a wall showing you the side he wants you to see. If he wants you to believe he does not understand, then that is what he’ll show you when he is listening intently.

Excerpt from” Son , You will Rise Again” in response to me asking him why he sang for one second at camp:

“Mom,

      you said before you trained to

      sing, you’d sing all the time. The

      kids would ask you to sing, and

     then laugh behind your back.”

That is just a fragment of the poem when I tell him his sun will rise again. I was surprised because he actually listened to a social lesson I’d taught him to save him from being teased when he possibly would not realize it. I was so proud.

Hayes is also getting a nice play set in August complete with a swing that will hold him for years to come and a tire swing. This will be great to encourage to play in the yard again, and as a break from homework.

3. We’ve hit “or worse,” “or poorer,” and “in sickness“ in more times than I can count in
our marriage, but I can tell you John was always my light “when all other lights go
out” (Tolkien).

I was writing poems about this man beginning in 2008. He has been my support and
best friend through all of our hurricanes. This is not our first difficulty to overcome,
as I was with him through his mother’s death, his father’s death, and other losses we
suffered.

This is an excerpt from a poem I wrote for him in 2009 and worked on again in 2010
called “A Blue Ridge Tale.”

“Oh, my soul, where do you go,
when fervors are high
and spirits gone?

My soul flies as quick as a hurricane
sweeping the coast empty of light.

But, to the mountains and in the skies
only there does my spirit climb.

With him, my love, I climb far above
the cities and lights.“

John is also responsible for inspiring my title Corrie’s Season and for the poetry collection, When we Danced in the Rain.

4. The scaffold …

There is a life outside my family and writing work to which I will return and find my
way. I did not have words for my students after my daughter’s death. I have always
loved them as they all deserved to be loved, and perhaps they felt I threw too much
real world their way because where ever they go in life, they are not going to land on
silver cushions with a remote, video game console and a snack.

To be indifferent and apathetic will earn you nothing. To plagiarize to skate by will earn you nothing except a temporary escape. To want to hurry back to your Instagram and Snap Chat to find out what she said will earn that $10 an hour check. It is not enough to live without desire to be something. It is not enough to write six words on a page and say, “I did it.”

I will tell my next group, “Get that work done. I walk on nails, and I am here with
you.”

Out of the mouth of a 14-year-old babe, the student wrote to me that if this student was
my child: “I would not want you to grieve long.” This student reminded me that because of the lives I had affected in a positive way, that I was not done. This student reminded I still have many other children whose lives will need my touch.

There is the other side of my career and social life. Amazing co-workers and friends
have built a scaffold for my family and me, so we can cross what seems like the rickety bridge in Indiana Jones that is about to fall. My co-workers, members of churches, friends and family are and have been building a new bridge with a scaffold. They are making sure I do not become a hermit again as I have a habit of doing.

All of the people in our life who help us in more ways that I can name deserve more thanks and gratitude than I know how to express even in words.

I know this.

Corrie loved people. She would want me to pour love, joy and attention back into all these wonderful people.

By Rebecca T. Dickinson, Corrie’s Mom. Copyright 2008-2020 All rights reserved on all words and poetry excerpts as property of R.T. Dickinson.