Dad sits in a waiting room.
Eyes red from reading. Eyes tired from small screens and a World War II leaders’ novel that I’d given to Mom last Christmas.
A Christmas when …
Well, it doesn’t matter. Christmases such as that have gone the way of unicorns.
He waits in a room the size of two living room couches next to each other. The light above reminds me of the one that used to blink above my desk as a small county news writer and photographer.
“This book,” he says, “is about real leaders who rose to the trials of the times. We don’t have that now.”
Where have heroes gone, I think. Who knows?
I bring Dad a turkey sandwich because he has not eaten all day. He’s lost weight. I notice it’s not from his usual work in the yard or walk nine holes at the golf course.
His sister is gone, and in his eyes, I see the fear and worry that would eat him alive if not for an inner strength.
Dad’s wife fell as she walked the dog in the dark of morning, and was dealt several fractures in her shoulder. At the same time, my beloved aunt went to Hospice before her death last week.
After the long hours in a room that might make a person forget his or her identity in a George Orwell novel, a nurse calls Dad. It is then I realize …
I need a hero. We need a hero.
Before my daughter, Corrie, graduated to heaven; she was attached to Wonder Woman.
“Do you want to watch Wonder Woman?” Hayes asked.
“Her name’s not Wonder Woman, Hayes,” said Corrie, more like an older sister who’s annoyed that her baby brother showed up at the wrong moment. “She’s Diana.”
Yes, in the time of unicorns and Christmases where we smile, Diana makes the world better, I think.
Corrie and I had adored a hero named Diana, only our heroines were different.
Growing up, I adored Princess Diana, and the work she did for people in need around the world. I admired the idea of a tall woman with short hair could be beautiful. I respected how she used her fame to bring attention to AIDs and mines. Tears streamed from my eyes when the news announced …
“Diana, Princess of Wales, has died.”
But Diana delivered the message that just because a person dealt with mental illness, doesn’t mean they were weak.
They had an inner strength.
I am one such person who deals with mental illness from previous experiences in my life, and the aftermath of Corrie’s exit from our lives.
Now, Dad and I walk to the Women’s Tower in the hospital.
I remember the last time I had walked through those doors, and I summon every bit of strength in me, as we passed ambulances outside the windows. I put my head down in the same way I do when I walk down the Pre-K and Kindergarten hall everyday to pick up Hayes from school …
because Corrie’s name is not there.
I shove out memories of Vietnam style rain, and ambulance doors opening and shutting.
I keep going because my mother needs me. My father needs me, and I know I will not fall apart even if I question God for taking such an intelligent, beautiful, and impish child away. Even though I burn the ambulance bill every time it comes to the house.
I am strong.
The last time I had walked through the doors of the Women’s Tower, we brought Corrie at two weeks old with pneumonia.
As the elevator doors close, I inhale slowly. I push out of my mind that the ambulance …
was coming to the hospital first. It would’ve been shorter and quicker than Levine and maybe, just maybe …
I see Dad’s eyes again. So red. The first man I have loved in my life. My first super hero …
When we finally arrive to the floor where my mother stays, only one of us can visit her at a time. I sit on the floor, and speak with my therapist who helps me work through the wait. Thanks to my new medication, I react less emotionally to a given situation. I still feel it just enough like a needle when the doctors draw blood.
I go back to my Mom, asleep. No one explains to my Dad nor I about the specifics of her surgery.
Mom lays in a bed with her arm in a black sling unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
A neon green ball sits on top of her covered hand. I wish I could lay next to her as I often did as a child scared of a thunder storm only I will stay with her letting Mom she’s not alone.
I don’t remember the specific memory, but I have a favorite picture of Mom and I tucked away.
My parents took me as a toddler to a place in the mountains called Table Rock where John and I later took our children. Mom never looked more beautiful to me. She had her own Princess Diana style hair cut with Wonder Woman’s hair color.
The nurse says, “Food is coming soon, and I need to ask questions.”
“Daddy needs to go home,” I say. “I will stay.”
I sit near Mom while the nurse asks the usual questions, and I try to forget how similar the room looks to the one in which Corrie and I had stayed when hospitalized for pneumonia until Christmas Day 2014. When I …
breastfed Corrie while she breathed with tubes in her nose.
Daddy has never looked more tired or skinny in all the years I’ve known my father.
“It’s time to go home, Daddy,” I say.
When the nurse leaves and the food arrives, Mom doesn’t want to eat, much like the past two weeks. The food is not from the restaurants I watch on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. It’s not even the food I serve. I know she needs to eat.
“I don’t want the turkey,” she says.
She makes a face and pokes out her lips.
“You must eat,” I say. “The nurse says you will feel nausea if you do not.”
“I don’t want the chicken,” she says.
It’s not chicken, I think, but now is not the time to debate with my mother nor be my trademark smart ass.
“Let’s try the carrots.”
“I don’t want to eat.”
I put two carrots hoping to sneak them into her mouth, much like I used to do through this year with my vegetable hating child, Corrie.
“I can’t eat anymore.”
Earning the nickname from my parents, the “dictator,” I put more carrots on the fork.
“I don’t want the turkey,” she says as she chews carrots in her mouth. “Let me eat the mashed potatoes.”
I put the mashed potatoes without the tablespoon of gravy kitchen staff had dished out, and feed her. She makes the face like a Southern woman, who is unaccustomed to tea without sugar.
“No more.”
“Let’s eat some more carrots, hmm?”
“I don’t want carrots,” she says.
“If you eat carrots, there’s chocolate ice cream,” I say. “Corrie would want you to eat your ice cream.”
After I feed her four bites of carrots and ice cream, she refuses to eat anymore. I don’t want to leave my mother.
I must also return to my son.
There are times we look for heroes. They’re not in the sky. They are deep within us below where our demons grab our gut.
Photos and writing by Rebecca T. Dickinson
Corrie's Season 