The Halloween Graveyard
The other day, while mindlessly driving down a narrow, fall-colored, leaf-filled neighborhood street, I noticed that Halloween decorations were beginning to appear. Pumpkins. Ghosts. Witches. And then the graveyard.
I slowed down to take it all in. The Halloween graveyard.
This particular family had elaborately constructed a very real-looking cemetery complete with a spider-webbed decorated iron fence, an ominous looking entry gate and more tombstones than I cared to count. I smiled a little and shook my head. Innocent and ignorant I’ve come to call them.
TWENTY YEARS AGO WHEN GRIEF WAS SO FRESH
Twenty years ago my response was different. Twenty years ago, my wife and I were trying to figure out how to survive (that’s all we asked for back then) our first Halloween without our first-born child. Our 18-month-old daughter Erin had died suddenly just a few months earlier on July 18, 1990.
We had done the unthinkable. Together we walked into the funeral home’s showroom and picked out a casket for our little girl. Not a new bed. Not a new bike. Like other mommies and daddies got to do. We bought a casket. And together we picked out an outfit. The outfit “she’d wear”… well, forever. And we purchased a plot. In the children’s section of a cemetery. And designed a marble marker. “I carry your heart,” it reads, that was placed above her body. In the cemetery.
Twenty years ago, when grief was so new, and fresh, and unsettling, and confusing, that first Halloween made me angry. How dare they decorate with gravestones? How dare they build fake cemeteries with blood-stained hands and arms and legs reaching up from the earth. It all felt cruel and inhumane and specifically directed at my wife and I that year.
MY CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH LIFE
But as the months passed, and turned into years, and as I set the intention to heal all that needed to be healed…my relationship with the Halloween cemetery changed. As did my relationships with so many other parts of my life.
Innocent and ignorant. And I mean that in the nicest way. I realized and understood that the Halloween cemetery builders were not trying to hurt me. They weren’t trying to cause me more pain. In truth, that weren’t even really thinking of people like me. People learning to live with the death of our children. As I drive past now, twenty years later, I simply shake my head and smile …a little.
If you’d like to explore this further, or any other facet of your grief journey, I work with people as a coach one-on-one. If you’re in the Rockford, IL area, we can do that in person. If you’re out of the local area, we can Skype or Facetime. If you'd like to work with me, please email me at tomzuba@aol.com and we can discuss deatails.
My eldest son, Ryder, passed on October 27, 2013. I used to love Halloween. Since then, we have given out candy but haven’t decorated. It’s all I could do to get through the month. This year feels different somehow. 7 years. We still only have fall decorations up. Crows, pumpkins, fall wreath, but the dread is gone. We will commemorate his passing with a hike to his favorite mountaintop and an intimate dinner while we play his music. Ryder was a musician and left us with enough of his original songs to create 3 CDs. I am counting my blessings this year, and it feels like the month may pass without the gut wrenching pain of previous years. Always right beside me, I love you, Ryder Buck.
Lane died in August, the first Halloween, could not stand to look at the ‘decorations.’
Especially the lawn graveyards.
It was painful.
Even though, it was not about me either.
The next Halloween was a little better realizing they are just that decorations.
Lane loved Halloween, we had a graveyard, wooden caskets, (yes even a small one)
And he was all decked out as the grim reaper.
Fog machine, scary music.
It was not about real people who were dead or died.
It was Halloween, that’s all.
So now to me, it’s just that Halloween.
Not meant to offend me, or a anyone else.
I choose not to decorate, my home or give out candy, but do not feel indifferent to those that do.
Again, it’s not about me. ?
Halloween was our annual campout/halloween decorating contest and it was also when, gathered with our friends we camped with, would celebrate my late son’s birthday. He loved it all, the scary stuff, the funny stuff, the cute stuff and his birthday attention. It’s easy to go there (now that’s it’s been 3 years) and celebrate the fun and creepy of Halloween and to live life to the fullest like he would do if he was here. It helps me honor his zest for life.
I have been working on the death process idea since I can remember. My birthday is Oct 30, so Halloween has always been “my holiday”. I was fascinated with cemeteries, I would sneak away and visit the cemetery. I was a little afraid of the mausoleums with their creaky doors. OK…what I loved about the cemeteries was the volumes of marble history. Each life condensed into a few sentences carved in stone. I would read as many as my time allowed. I would close my eyes and imagine what that named person was like. All grown up I worked for a short time at a memorial park. The position was advertised as “Family Grief Counselor” translation high pressure sales man. I often told clients, what I want when I die (I will have it carved before I die) is a nice stone, a rock and it will say, “No tombstone will cover my bones, I am dancing in the meadow” Maybe one day centuries down the road someone would stop in front of my head stone and wonder who would put that on a rock.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts which pretty much sum up mine. Cute Disney princesses, turtles, frogs, superman, firemen….love them all. Gravestones, plots, headstones, ghouls, death, darkness….no thanks. After burying six people in seven years….I’ll pass. SMH. Xo