A switch turns on and off in us.
It cannot be replaced with a clap on and clap off version.
Some of us are familiar with being told to “turn that light out” before we leave the room, so we don’t waste electricity.
My grandfather, TL, was notorious for saying that as I went room to room.
A switch turns on for many of us as the rush of the back-to-school season penetrates our thoughts. It makes us hurry to Amazon, or to social distance in stores.
Sometimes we build up the anxiety in ourselves when we know there is a lot to do. The switch turns on with “I’ve got to get this done.”
Last week, Wednesday and Friday were the days when grief hit John and I hard like the tornado that brought catastrophe to the farm in February.
We openly shared with each other about what triggered us. Often these are short conversations that switch into codes. Our switch of utter despair turn on, or of bittersweet joy:
Moments when you feel your heart pulled down to your gut capture you and cause you to search for an empty room.
On Friday, an online university commercial showed kids doing STEM activities or learning with a laptop. One girl was all it took to hit my switch. I started sobbing before I put on my mascara.
In the commercial, I saw a would be future as a print picture set on fire. I sobbed, and when I looked at John, his eyes watered. We both knew why.
Just as I pulled myself together last Friday, I went into the teachers’ mailroom, and saw snack packs of fruit.
My eyes went from the bear claws, and I thought: TL and Corrie. When I saw the fruit snack packs, I thought: Corrie and Lesslie. Tears poured down my face, and I knew I was not going to make it to my classroom without someone seeing me.
I know people are there to support me. I work at an incredible school where the administration understands and co-workers remind me constantly of their support. They have and continue to be wonderful.
But I am unaccustomed to being so open when in the last decade I have kept a life to myself and my family. John and I and my Mom and I discussed this feeling of we have to run away to a room where no one can see us.
I gathered myself and went to my room as they called a meeting for my grade level. When I reached my classroom, the switch did not turn off. Tears kept coming. I could not enter a room with red puffy eyes and mascara running like the woman with too much make up on the 1980s and 1990s’ TV station where they asked for a commitment of money as you got saved by Jesus and a telephone call.
My grandmother has held more influence on my life than everyone else. She taught me faith is private. We don’t have to go yelling in the streets about it, but live through our actions. As I got older and experienced the way my son was treated as a child with autism and ADHD as a toddler and preschooler and myself as his parent, I withdrew my emotions from the public space, too. Bottling it up of course led to anger.
But that was all gone.
As I sat at my desk, my sobbing burst over bear claws and fruit cups.
I saw TL eating a bear claw in the dining room. Then I saw his body in the coffin, and it was the first body I ever saw. While my cousins and brother were with a babysitter, I went to the visitation and funeral. I remembered sitting on a couch rocking in shock.
He was gone.
Just gone.
I covered my face even in my own classroom in the dark, and tried to stiffle the sounds of my sobs.
Why were there bear claws next to fruit cups? Why did they both have to like bear claws?
It was no one’s fault. Like the commercial, it happened. No one knew I had had a recent dream where Corrie showed me her connection to my grandfather.
John has kept all types of junk food I never touched, but that included bear claws. Corrie had a sweeter tooth than her brother, Hayes, but he would join in the junk food eating, too. I tried to balance the children’s diets with healthier options.
In the 2018-2019 school year, I picked Corrie up first a lot of days. She went in with me to Lesslie Elementary School, Hayes’s old school, and we waited in the front office while they called for Hayes. A cart sat up there with snacks left from lunch. They had fruit, cheese sticks, milk, juice, fruit cups and sometimes a bear claw.
Corrie started her charm offensive. She went to the secretary first to ask if anyone could have the snacks.
“Mommy, can I please, please get a snack?”
If there was a fruit cup, Corrie got a plastic spoon or fork. With the cheese sticks, she said, “Mommy, I’ve got two for Hayes and two for me.”
Because one cheese stick is never enough.
I took two of them from her and put them back. She squinted her big blue eyes, so that it seemed sea colored laser beams came at me.
“But Mommy, Hayes gets two, and I get two.”
“No, sit down.”
I handed it to her. She always remembered her brother. She always got two, or four, of something.
Corrie would ask the secretary to read her a book. Sometimes she sat in the secretary’s lap as she read her a book from the front office. She would pick the same book and remember exactly where they had left off.
As soon as we got in the car with Hayes, they devoured their snacks. Corrie would drink the juice in the fruit cup.
The switch went off as I sobbed in the silence remembering all of it. I needed the silence to regroup, wipe mascara from under my eyes and look around at my LEGO and Corrie themed classroom.
No fruit cups.
No stare offs.
Most of the pictures with today’s post happened after Friday’s grief blast. I still woke up on Saturday a hot mess. Then I started moving with a purpose. The switch went off again to do for Corrie and for Hayes.
To decorate for my heaven child.
To get back to school ready for my blessing.
My rule has always been: what I do for one I do for the other.
On Saturday, I had to reorganize my car, so I could prepare it for back-to-school and for the new arrangement at Corrie’s gravesite. This summer I did not write thank you cards. Sometimes I sat down to start, and then I just wanted to sleep.
Monday will mark the first start of a school year without Corrie.
Wednesday will mark thirteen weeks since her death.
And, Thursday, the 27th will mark three months.
We went about our Saturday with a purpose as I remembered the need to put up a new back to school display on Corrie’s grave. I needed to go by little Thomas’s grave and his infant sister’s because their toys keep disappearing, being knocked off or torn apart. Of all the graves I look after, those are the only two where that keeps happening.
When John took Corrie’s play kitchen to her preschool classroom, someone gave him condolences. He had just as hard of a Wednesday and Friday as me. I shook my head.
Without asking, he said, “I will cut the grass on their graves.”
“Thank you.”
He is not ready to return to church for fear he will see Corrie run down the hall. We just got through one switch, and we were able to turn around to work usefully on Saturday.
After all, life is not always filled with moments of fruit cups and bear claw tears.
Photos and words by Rebecca T. Dickinson
Corrie's Season 