“Meet me at sunset as the last colors cross the sky,” she says.
“You won’t know the day or time, Mommy, but I will meet you
at sunset.” How often I think of you with every bit of dirt I dig
into with a pick axe in the way my father teaches me
to the moment when the sun peaks across the sky. I still
ask the reasons why. No one answers. Some people give their
thoughts about the reasons why. But some answers and reasons are
beyond our souls, and there is knowledge we will never know.
In the almost two years, since she left, I’ve learned how to walk again;
sometimes I stumble in my steps. When you lose someone you love, you dig into
the earth and bury a part of you. It may sprout something new. It may
need more shade, or sun instead, but in this way, you live again. I hear my
daughter in every sunrise, noon time, and sunset. I hear her laugh when I
do not try and bury her memories just to keep from dropping to my knees.
When I was little, my father sat me on his lap as he mowed the lawn. He grew
a garden on the lower hill of our backyard. When he bought property, it always
had a hill. Once there, he planted, added grass, and trimmed back overhanging
limbs. I never had an interest in the plants that grew. I just thought, “That’s pretty,
Dad,” and proved all the ways I could kill a plant because my attention wandered
somewhere else. I failed to understand the life in front of me.
But life takes a different route, and no one knows the reasons why my little girl
had to die. You realize how easily life slips away, and some give their thoughts
about the reasons why. But some answers and reasons are beyond our souls,
and there exists knowledge we’ll never know. Life appears in the sunrise, and
the bright sun of noon time, but suddenly it slips when the last colors
leave the sky. I’ve carried a third life, and just as quickly, October’s hope freezes
and never blossoms like the wisteria ready to bloom until early spring frost.
I understand my father more now, and why he always digs,
spreads the potting soil, and places the plant where it needs to grow. How lovingly
he spreads the potting soil and dirt around each plant and flower. My father has
learned that the ground in our front yard below the mountain is harder than the soil
at his home. Swing the axe above your head, and witness cracks across the
ground like those from an earthquake. Break, break and break the terrain until
you see a void in the earth larger than the bulb or the roots of the plant. Put in
the potting soil. I hear her say, “Mommy, you’re planting flowers for me. They’re
so pretty.” Slice the soil around the root ball four times, so the roots don’t tangle
and choke. “Mommy, where are my gloves?” she says. “I’m planting next to you.”
“Mommy, look at the lilies,” she says. I look down at the hole as my hands pack
dirt around the pink calla lilies. “Mommy, you’re not looking.” In my mind, I
reply, “Corrie, I’m making the plant safe like your Papa taught me.
I promise I’ll look when I’m done.” “Awe, but Mommy, look now.”
I understand my father more, and why he always digs. He hears her talking just
as she speaks to me when I break the ground. That is why I must stay until, as
my daughter says, “Meet me at sunset just as the last colors cross the sky.
You won’t know the day or time, Mommy, but I will meet you at sunset
as the last colors cross the sky.”
Poem and Photos by Rebecca T. Dickinson, April 2022
Corrie's Season 