I was never much for Halloween.
I get the attraction. Monster movie marathons give some of us the excuse to park it in front of the screen with popcorn and watch. I loved the movie days when you could afford to go, and it was worth going. I got a Cherry Coke every time.
I never needed the horror shows because, as I wrote soon after Corrie’s graduation into heaven, through a poem, When Nightmares Walk:
“Monsters with a face
horror paints
and fingernail blades
have nothing on my nightmares and me.”
I promise this post is not all dark, and it is rooted in the dress up, paint a zombie face on a princess, grab a unicorn purse, and pump your music kind of joy Corrie inspires.
But the hope does not come without walking through nightmares. You have to know the nightmares in order to flip them. You have to stare horror in the face, so you can recall hope. Then, as a parent who is not crazy about Halloween in the first place, you have to discover new meaning.
I would never write the grotesque, the unimaginable, but I include a sense of truth as I keep the nightmares that still plague me at times between my journals and me. Even in “When Nightmares Walk,” darkness is not the message:
“In the distance, I heard a voice, like one that
used to giggle when she splashed herself in
the bathtub and got water on the floor,
‘Mommy, sing me a song, and not
about a raven or a nevermore. Sing about
where we fly and about my new wings.’”
Before I speak of fluffy angel wings—the kind Corrie would claim to ask of God—I need to share a small truth because to read the information is to understand a small part of what bereaved parents and siblings, the forgotten mourners, experience.
Sometimes I have the strength to flip the nightmare. I am not strong because I want to be. I would not even call it strength. I move forward because I still have a responsibility to my husband and son, to my students and colleagues. At times, I am able to flip the nightmares and make beauty of the the things Corrie loved. At times, I have to cry it out
Corrie would not want me to ignore Halloween anymore than she’d want me to surrender to nightmares.
Yet, I will still face nightmares “with a face horror paints.”
For the first time, I said this to a doctor. Before the funeral, John and I had been waiting for the morgue to transfer Corrie’s Earthly vessel to the funeral home. Each day that passed closer to the visitation, I wanted to march over to this city morgue. It was about to experience a rage greater than any employees had ever witnessed.
Why didn’t the morgue call?
On the day Corrie left, we had already experienced the difficulty in placing where she went into cardiac arrest because we were on the state line. We had already been interviewed by investigators from the county home to the city morgue, my home county, and John’s home county.
I was not yet in a place where I could hear Corrie’s voice the way I do now.
When John spoke with the city morgue, the man said, “it had been a busy weekend. Sir, we have many bodies here.”
My baby’s angel body had been locked in the dark for three days.
About one hour later, John said, “[The funeral home] is on the way to get her.”
Corrie still had the Frozen figurine that I had placed in her hand—curled like she was holding your hand—and that, for me, was a small sign of hope.
Ultimately, I know my daughter too well. She would say, “Silly mommy, I’m dancing.”
Now I know she would say, “Sing about where we fly and my new wings.”
Corrie loved Halloween. Not for the scary side, but for the dress up and pretend. Let’s be honest.
She loved all of the candy, and would eat more than half, if the pumpkin was left unattended.
Halloween, for us now, is not a time of the scary or haunted houses. We’ve already walked through horror.
It is a time we remember how Corrie celebrated dress up, and how she wanted to be five different princesses and Wonder Woman. Halloween becomes a time to make the grave beautiful, and not foul. Yes, it is a time to decorate. But we will decorate with roses, flowers, pumpkins and princesses. We will think with wings and of hummingbirds rather than of beasts.
In the spirit of “Zombie Face”—a poem I’m still writing—where I feel as if I’m a zombie when I see other mothers and daughters, I feel the spirit of Corrie make fun of me. Instead she wants to open my make up box, and find the best application for a zombie princess. Where I am somber in some poems, she is the light, the imp and the angel.
For us, Halloween is not a night of zombies, but a dream where we laugh at putting on too much lipstick on a five-year-old as our faces become beautiful zombie princesses.
Because at the end of the day, she was my fairytale, princess, and a small bit of happily ever after. She was Halloween in reverse.
By Rebecca T. Dickinson. All words copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson, 2020
Corrie's Season 