When I Walk through the Nightmare

Nightmares hit us in real life.

In fact, it would not be real life without nightmares walking.

I wake up every morning confronted by the monster of all nightmares. We can face financial hardships. I know those. In fact, my husband and I have stared some other nightmares in their face, called them by their rightful name, and rebuilt every time.

But there are some nightmares from which you never wake.

Every morning, I know my daughter is not with my family and me.

Monsters with a face

horror paints

and fingernail blades

have nothing on my nightmares and me.

“when nightmares walk” excerpt by rebecca t. dickinson

I could call this after the world ends, but I still have two essential parts of my world: my husband and son.

Some of my 2019-2020 students sent me emails reminding me of my purpose, the effect I’d had on their lives, and one reminded me that “if I was your child, I would not want you to grieve long.” This student stated that I still had a purpose with future students.

There is life after the nightmare in the seven and a half weeks, since my daughter died. I have days, like this past Wednesday, when the pain and the heart break anchor me to the ground. I cry because she’s gone. I can remind myself of the words I’ve written about her joy and how she’d want me to live with joy, but in those moments when the nightmare walks, it is difficult to pull myself out of the darkness.

Everyone has a different way of dealing with grief. I do not blame any parent or grandparent who does not wish to read on. I do not wish this reality; this nightmare on any person.

But I have had to learn to walk again because the nightmare will never go away. The way in which I deal with my nightmare is what will take me from the days when I crawl–because I will–to the days when I walk. Corrie, my daughter, and my son, Hayes, together gave me the feeling of flying.

My son reminds, “You still have two children.”

“Yes, I have two children. I have you here, and a daughter in heaven.”

“Stop saying that. Just say you have two children.”

“Yes, son, I have two children.”

Besides writing constantly as poetry flows from my mind and I write the beginning lines of poems in my journals, I started something new. The best way I can explain it is that:

My Memorial Kinder Walk is the one way in which I can physically show my love and honor the memory of my daughter, Corrie.

When I walk through the nightmare, I have to figure out how to walk, rebuild and raise a son with John to still become someone purposeful in this world. I do not have all the answers. The world has more problems than I have any solution. I do know this.

No matter our belief, in God, aliens, both or none, wouldn’t it be great if we spent our time in some way in the service of others?

We have lived in a very “look at me” society. I see each day, under normal circumstances, when I have to pull teens out from their video game, Snap Chat, instagram, “guess what she said to me” worlds. I have always believed our greatest purpose in this world, no matter our individual beliefs, is to serve and help each other.

I had hoped to do this with teaching, but teaching now is not enough. I have to do something beyond to honor Corrie’s memory.

I started doing what I call the Memorial Kinder Walk. Rather than call it the grave walk, I walk around the cemetery in which my daughter is buried, find the graves of infants, babies, children and some teens. I tidy them up and leave pretties. I do not move anything that is there. I make sure you can see the child’s name. I make sure there is a beautiful arrangement.

When school starts back, I imagine this will become a weekly part of my routine, and as I adopt more of my Kinder Walk children, I will have to change the direction in which I go. Right now, not including my daughter, I have six.

It is healthy to walk, to learn about the children in any way I can, and to provide some way to honor their memory. As I’ve written this week on Twitter, I feel the weight of 10,000 mothers. I cannot imagine my daughter’s grave unattended, unloved, unkempt.

It will be three months until her beautiful grave marker arrives in black marble with her picture in a ceramic heart; her name, dates, and a quote in pink writing, and a vase.

No one wants to imagine the number of children in a cemetery as big as the one in which my daughter’s body rests. No one wants to know that there is an area of the cemetery called “Baby Land” where several babies have been buried, since 2010.

But in me, I feel the love of every mother for her child. Inside I feel the heart break of every mother whose children rest in that cemetery.

Just yesterday I found two more that I did not have pretties for, but that I will tend to on my next Memorial Kinder Walk. A mother named Elizabeth lost an infant daughter. Between Elizabeth and her infant daughter, her two year old son, Thomas, is buried.

I will not allow the nightmare to walk all over me to the point I disappear into one of life’s poisons. I will walk over the nightmare and bring beauty to a place in which tragedy has laid its claim. I will honor as many children and teens as I can find.

I will remember my daughter.