Memorial Day is a time for us to live our most genuine lives by recognizing the lives sacrificed.
In previous years, I’ve written a lot about Memorial Day. Last year, May 25, 2020; was my last Memorial Day with our daughter, Corrie.
As I wrote last year, it doesn’t matter whether or not you supported a war. What matters is that you recognize soldiers served, and sacrificed their lives.
Parents have lost their sons and daughters. Siblings long for their brothers and sisters.
For me, this is a time of genuine reflection. In July 2020, I wrote the poem below, Hallie, Did You Know?
Less than two months after Corrie’s graduation to heaven, I thought about my great grandmother, and her loss of her oldest son, Marshall.
How did she feel when he left to serve abroad during World War II?
How did she feel when she found out he was never coming home?
I explored all of these questions in her poem, and in honor of Marshall and Memorial Day, I share it again. The poem is also a part of my completed When We Danced in the Rain poetry collection about Corrie. It is connection to remind us, and me, others have experienced this greatest of heartbreaks.
Hallie, Did You Know?
Hallie,
did you know?
Did he wear his uniform,
stiff, in the expected way
like wooden stands placed
behind tall flowers to
keep them up straight
in award-winning gardens?
Did Marshall come to
you to say he would
leave Harvard and fight
overseas with an eager face
like a child serious about
a lemonade stand as a
business? He had wanted
to be a pilot, but he
was too tall.
Hallie, when he decided
to be a navigator, did you
try to talk him
out
of
it?
Hallie,
did you know?
You know he trained
as a navigator on a
plane and was stationed
all over the United States?
Because your husband was
a ship commander, did you
believe, as Marshall
believed, he’d survive
the German attack?
Did he laugh and say, “The
Germans don’t have
anything on me,” to
reassure you of his confidence
when he took his leave?
Did you hug and kiss
him, or did you stand
back after you had
picked a small hair
off his uniform?
Hallie,
did you know
that was his
last
goodbye?
The legend goes
Marshall’s plane was
shot down by the
Germans over the
storm gray waters of
the English Channel.
The crew’s bodies
were
never
found.
Hallie,
did you replay
your last goodbye
like I did when
I watched my
daughter die?
Did you scream
in the open and
walk without a
place to walk to,
or because you
were from
that generation,
you kept your feelings
tucked in and your
back, stiff, like wooden
stands placed behind
tall flowers to keep them
up straight in
award-winning gardens?
Hallie,
We had a body.
a small hand curled,
for a short time, to
hold on to, and I
can’t imagine when you
knew nothing,
could hold nothing
except Marshall’s shirt.
Like me,
you had a second
child, too, but
did you allow yourself
the time to fall apart?
Hallie,
did you speak
of Marshall again,
or just work in
a garden you
planted in his
memory?
Hallie,
did your
second son,
like my only son,
ask when
Marshall
(Corrie)
would
come home
again?
By Rebecca T. Dickinson Copyright 2020 R.T. Dickinson
Corrie's Season 