When I Flip the Grief

The birds chirp outside.

The underside of green leaves provides shade to those in the sun.

This is the time of year that usually provides some of us with our best memories.

The sound of children echo as they play in the pool in fewer amounts due to COVID-19.

When you hear your child or a child you care for laugh as he or she splashes in the pool, it hopefully sends roots of joy growing through your heart.

I always associated this time of year with joy because of those same reasons.  Most people I love, who died, passed away in the autumn. As a young artist, I began to associate the fall with loss.

But I lost my paternal grandmother on an Easter Sunday.

I lost my treasure; my love on May 27, 2020.

And July is Bereaved Parents Month.

How can I, or anyone, flip grief when it sometimes anchors your gut? It is so powerful that it pulls you down on the couch.

“No, I don’t want to go out today.”

I did not want to wake up this morning because I was in a dream so real where I held Corrie in my arms. 

Corrie appeared in a room she used to share with her brother. They were both there.  She wore red pajamas and laughed a laugh I would recognize over all of the children at the pool.  She laughed a laugh that would start an entire group up giggling.

Corrie sat in my lap.  She played and walked around me.  We realized a doctor would not be required again.  We were so happy, and her arms filled me with joy.

On the night when Corrie was pronounced dead after twenty minutes of resuscitation attempts at Levine’s, we sat with Corrie and people who spoke to us for a few hours.  Staff gave us a bag with support information following  her death. It included two books for our son, Hayes, to help him grapple with the loss.

I thought: What am I going to do with this bag?

For years, we’d kept a big bright pink and orange pool bag.  It held all of our bathing suits, sunscreen and pool toys.  We no longer needed something that big, and I have not been ready to get rid of Corrie’s bathing suits .

I flipped one part of my grief.

I took a bag associated with a black mark, and turned it into a pool bag for us and our son.

There are times when the grief is so powerful it overwhelms me, and I will sit and stare at the wall until I figure out what my next move is. Wednesdays, like today, are the hardest.

I try to flip the grief where I can, and I started with turning the grief bag into a swim bag. Instead of children’s books about goodbye, it has a squirt gun, towels, sun block and goggles. It is our official swim bag now, and we no longer look at it like it has a black mark on it.

This morning I did not want to wake up because of the girl I saw in my dreams laughing. That is the one I try to hold on to in the moments when I can flip my grief.