There is joy in grief.
At least in my short experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I have moments when I straight up ugly cry because a memory strikes us from something we see. Like any parent who has lost a child, I want my daughter back.
I want her now in the same way she wanted something now.
But I feel a joy today. A hope besides being on vacation until Sunday.
To know Corrie, is to know joy. I feel her in my writing, when I sit with her brother, when I walk in the field, look at the ocean and drive to Calabash, North Carolina.
I can tell you this if I let my mind wonder too far into the forests of her death, or if I had acted sooner or been better, I will sink to my knees. I have those moments, and I write about them, so I don’t.
But to know Corrie is to understand the depth of joy.
To understand Corrie brings a desire to dance.
I heard Corrie talking incessantly, as she would, on our way to Calabash. I heard her in my mind tell Hayes it was her turn to talk, and she asked if we would go to the big store across from the restaurant we like every year. While I am writing a poem called “Corrie in Calabash,” and I will write a post dedicated to Corrie in Calabash, I want to share the joy I felt.
To know Corrie is there brings about a peace.
To celebrate this joy, I share an excerpt from a three verse poem “In All the Worlds”:
We may become nothing but
specks of dust in the universe,
in all the cosmos and our history
becomes nothing more than the
algebraic formula you forget after
the test. But know I love my
daughter more than all the time
we forget and will be forgotten.”
All the worlds excerpt by rebecca t. Dickinson
Words and excerpt by Rebecca T. Dickinson. All work copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson.
Corrie's Season 