Two Years and One Month after Corrie

Two years after Corrie, nineteen parents and guardians know heartbreak during May.

I try never to judge anyone or anything because we often find ourselves in a world becoming ever more like a lawyer and judge. I do know:

the shock,

numbness,

loss of self and faith,

wanting someone to blame even if it is yourself,

how long the days become,

the inability to perform tasks once easy,

and the looks people give you, after a time, wondering if “you’ll get over it” in our Amazon Prime world.

Two years and one month after Corrie’s sudden death from an undetected abdominal tumor, I cannot offer answers.

You’ll never get over it.

I know what it means to let a friend go or they go away because this is not something the average person understands. While shows like Stranger Things and Outlander deal with death and grief more boldly than society does, we’re, at times, grief illiterate. We make peace with a friend no longer being a part of our lives because we know:

there is no moving on, although we may move forward,

a friend may stay or go, but our child is always our child whether we get to see her perform gymnastics like she always wanted to, or she’s a star in heaven;

we must work through the most difficult parts of our grief alone most of the time.

SEASONS TO GRIEF

In the early days of my grief about Corrie, my writing was raw. I’m still okay with that because writing those words was a part of my unraveling. It was a part of grieving not only my child, but the person I once was.

I think sometimes friends look for signs of our return after loss. It’s difficult to understand that the person that was will never return. But that’s why there are seasons to grief, and also friends, who are patient and stay nearby, will see a different you rise from the ashes.

I wrote in the early days about my middle school season. The loss and heartbreak you experience from grief will never go away. When you accept that, you grow in your grief. I think one of the misconceptions about grief is that it’s this long winding staircase into the darkness of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and some will sneer and say, “I don’t want to touch that.”

Grief is made of many emotions and parts of your life. Most importantly, it is the recognition of love for a person who is always a part of you.

Grief is composed of many seasons because the person you’ve lost is a person you love forever. You don’t stop talking about them, or having them as part of your life. If a person looks at you as if you’re strange or as if you don’t get what it means to operate in normal society, it’s okay to take the scissors and go snip.

You’ll never operate normally in society again.

A friend is either a SnapChat friend, there for the moment and gone in seconds, or a winter friend, those who stay around in high winds and snow storms. For the record, I do have my winter-time friends, and I’m grateful for them.

As you grieve, you will find your own flow through the seasons of grief. I’ve faced the shut myself in a room and let tears flood after nightmares invade. I’ve battled anger and overwhelming sadness together, and people have witnessed me this way. I always say, “Just leave me alone, and I’ll return.” I’ve gone catatonic more recently after nightmares where it’s difficult to talk at all.

BUT …

I’m stronger, and just like an island after a volcano, a new me is forming. It is a person who accepts that the nightmares will come, and I will have to face them. It is a person who knows she’ll have to explain why I sometime shut the door at work. It is a person who laughs more often, and sees the return of the autism mom who wants to make sure her son receives all of his services.

There is the teacher, who recognizes things in my profession are far from perfect right now, and I’m becoming more willing to fight.

It’s okay to slam a desk in the wall in your own room. This is a part of the seasons of grief. I will not say: “You’re not alone” because those words will wash over a parent who’s lost a child, and sees the world dissolve instantly. When Uvalde becomes a memory for society like Sandy Hook, I promise you those parents will still go through their seasons of grief because their child and where their child would be now will never go away.

Never.

A SEASON FOR HOPE

There is a season for hope. I never forget Corrie. I’ve found new ways to incorporate her in my life when I talk or build new friendships. Sometimes after the fire, you realize the friends and co-workers who have always been there, but you pushed them away because you don’t want them to see the most vulnerable parts of you.

I’m very gradually opening up to those friends and colleagues again. They get to see a version of me that laughs and wants to move forward in life with Corrie as a part of me. There is a fire renewed. A flame, rekindled.

I still cry sometimes, in grief, about my daughter. There are times it hits me hard, and the nightmares come. But, I also know most of the triggers, and how to separate myself from them. I know what I have to do to keep the darkness from dragging me into that basement.