I transcribed some poetry for Justine last night. The first is a story she likes to hear (and retell) about a dream her dad had when she was still in my womb.  The second, much more than a nursery rhyme. I’m saving these here so her childhood self can one day speak to her older self. Children are resilient, but I don’t believe in dismissing their grief. She talks about Vernon the most, I think…she says she is afraid of forgetting him. So I put pictures in her room of the two of them together. She doesn’t even remember when most of them were taken. But though she will tell people that Vernon has died, she doesn’t like when anyone implies she doesn’t have a dad.  “I do have a dad,” she says. “I’ll always have my dad.”

Daddy saw in his dream

that there was a baby girl,

who came out of mommy’s tummy—

She came up to him  and snuggled with him.

When mommy’s baby arrived,

Daddy said:

“That’s the same baby girl from my dream:

She had dark eyes.

She had dark hair .

And her voice sounded the same.

She was the same little girl in my dream.

She looked just the same.”

*

Daddy, Daddy gone away—

I miss him, but I know

that I will see him another day.

*picture above from the narrowest slide in England.

“