Halloween Memories

"Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, 

Voices whisper in the trees, 

Tonight is Halloween."

Dexter Kozen

Dear Lloyd,

Last night I was reading a few of the memories in the memory jar that our daughter made for me.  I still remember how delighted I was and remain with her gift: a jar she decorated herself that is filled with slips of papers on which she put short memories that she has of growing up.  The jar is labeled with instructions that I am to pick out a memory or two whenever I am feeling sad or alone. She was, as you know, hesitant in giving it to me after a lady where she works told her she would not like such a gift at all, that she wants things that are bought in a store.  But you know me, and it is more previous to me than any gift she could have gotten and I treasure it.  I try always to appreciate the time that  people take doing things for me.  I remember a few months before you died, I thanked you for some little chore you had done, and you asked why I always said thank you, particularly for doing something you felt was  your responsibility.  As I told you love, even though it may have been something that was  your responsibility and that you should do, not everyone does those things.  And it is those little things we do for others that knit together the love a family shares.

But back to the Memory Jar, the memory I picked made me smile and was particularly appropriate as it dealt with Halloween and how we used to take a pair of your old jeans and an old shirt, fill them with straw, and make a scare crow to sit in the chair outside.  And of course the cat, being a cat, the cat  you got for me our first Christmas together,  had to avail herself of the lap even if it was that of a scare crow. 

When I spent time with Tiffany today, we talked of that and of how we made a ghost and tied it to post that went over the top of the drive, of how you came home and the ghost walloped the windshield of your truck scaring the dickens out of you and how you would gripe and complain all the while with a smile choked behind your words, belying your sense of humor.  How I miss the way you could make me laugh.

I think your laughter and quirky sense of humor is one of the things that I miss the very most, love. Would it surprise you to know that sometimes I still hear you whisper, that words you said in the past pop up and float through my brain and make me smile?   Laughter, I believe, was part of the glue that held this family together despite having, like any other family, trying times.  

While I was looking for the picture of the scare crow, I ran across some Halloween shots.  Do you remember how I cut up and sewed the couch cover for Jeff's chaps the year he was a cowboy and died old pajamas brown so that Tiffany could be a cat?  Or the year my mom made their costumes?  Do you remember my story of Tiffany going trick or treating the first time and after a few houses telling me, "I don't believe this.  We just knock on people's doors and they give us candy?" 

And I could go on and on.  I remember your stories about turning the outhouse over on  Halloween, of hiding the neighbor's gate, of taking your grandpa's wagon apart and putting it back together on the roof of the shed.  What scamps you boys were and how your mother must have struggled not to laugh as she disciplined you.  Thank you, love, for still making me smile, even though there are those times when tears still mingle with the smiles.  I miss you.  I miss your stories and your humor, but I do remember, at least some of them.  Until we meet again, I remain

Yours , Melissa

The First Birthday Without Him

"We know we are getting old when the 

only thing we want for our birthday is not 

to be reminded of it."

Anonymous

 Dear Lloyd,

Your birthday is rapidly approaching, and even knowing how much you hated birthday celebrations, hated anything that brought you attention and put the spot light on you, it is still and will always be a special day for me.  After all, if you were never born, I could not have met you.  If I had not met you, I suppose perhaps I would have fallen in love with someone else, but I would not have the children and I would not have the life your love helped to form.  And would they have loved me as you did with a love so solid you could almost reach out and touch it? Some things you just never know.  We make the decisions we make, for better or for worse, and they shape our lives.

It has been unseasonably warm, love, but it is starting to get chilly at night.  I don't believe that I have ever had to turn the furnace on or filled the wood stove in the morning when the cold came and chill air snaked through our home for over thirty five years.  When we heated with wood, I would hear the rustling sounds of your movements while I snuggled, only half conscious,  beneath a warm blanket in the bed you vacated only after gently kissing my cheek or my forehead, the bed we bought at the sale barn because we could not afford to buy new.  I remember the smell of you, how your breath would tickle, warm and moist. It is a funny thing about your kisses, how they could range from gentle to burning hot depending upon the circumstances.  How I miss those touches.

When we began heating with a furnace, more than hearing I remember the smell the furnace has when it first gets turned on in the fall.  Always I knew that your doing this was a sign of your love, of your protection: that your care-taking was an extension of and expression of your love. Actions were always so much easier for you than words. You always seemed to feel that words left you more vulnerable.

Always I appreciated it and reciprocated in different ways:  my failed coconut cream pies that you loved so, biscuits that could have been used as ammunition.  You always mastered things so easily whereas I often struggled along, but the effort more than satisfied you.  Your eyes told the tale. You had that odd talent of being able to look beyond the action or the result of the action to the intention behind it. I hope and think you know that I understood and was appreciative. Like the Joni Mitchell song, "Papa brought home the sugar, Mama taught me the deeper meaning."  You see, love, it was not the action itself, but the love that fueled the action.  Thank you for letting me be selfish and stay in the warm bed while your feet hit the cold floor and your skin felt the chill you shielded me from.  This year I will have to turn the furnace on myself. 

Tiffany said she is going to spend your birthday with me.  She did this without being asked which makes it all the more special.  What else would I expect?  She is, after all, your daughter.  Hopefully, she does not feel obligated but wants to spend time with me.  I know the children worry about me, particularly since my break down at Arlington Cemetery where I had to leave and tears careening down my cheeks.  You would scold me, I know, for you never liked for me to be unhappy and you thought it foolish to mourn the dead, those loved ones gone from us.  If we believe in heaven, they are in a better place.  And I witnessed first hand how much pain you had those last years. I know, love, it is selfish of me.  But sometimes I just can't help it.  I just miss you so. You helped to raise fine children though I STILL would have liked a third child despite the fact we really could not afford it ( you got won that disagreement.)

I'll be okay, love.  Wait for me.  Enjoy the company of those that came before.   And Happy Birthday!

Love, Melissa

The Rose Trellis

Dear Lloyd, Today I painted the rose trellis you made for me when we moved here over twenty years ago. The rose we planted there died this winter. I almost decided to tear down the trellis, but I remembered that you gave your time to make it for me for Mother's Day. So despite it being a bit dilapidated by time I painted it as best I could. Now to buy another climbing rose. Thanks, love, for all the time you gave doing things for me just because you knew they gave me pleasure.

And There You Were

"It was evenings like then, when beneath dim

light and relaxing in a sultry bath that she missed

him the most.  A flicker of candlelight, snow against

the window and the soothing scent of creme caramel....

all were a comfort to her as she closed her eyes, 

summoned memories and many a tender thought.  She 

didn't feel deserving of the devotion bestowed upon her, but

she had finally learned to accept its wondrous gift, knowing 

that love was the source of existence and its only end."

Donna Lynn Hope

Dear Lloyd,

I was not sure how to write this as there are no words to express the ravenous yearning that surged through me at the International Story Telling Festival when he sat down.  I could not see his eyes or his face, but his hair was cut just like yours, a few gray wisps intertwined with the silvery whiteness of age.  It was the same length, lay the same.  

His ears held the same curve and thickness, the same skin coloration, and I could see the ear piece of his glasses.  He was dressed in your style of plaid shirt, and it was neatly tucked into his jeans, bound by a thin, tan leather belt as yours always was.  His neck, perhaps a bit thicker, and his waist as well.  But it could have been you sitting there.  

Tears began to stream down my face, for while I knew it could not be you, it was you, and my loss returned as sharply and deeply as it was when first you left me.  I watched you die: I was with you when your soul departed, but somehow here you are.  I wonder what this strange man, so like you, would do if I tapped his shoulder and ask him to hold me, to let me bury deeply into his shoulder as I did yours so often when I was hurt or in need.  For this was what I wanted to do, to fill this need that plagues my nights and days, this endless aching that eases but does not ever truly abate.  The loss that I thought I had dealt with and was behind me instead is in front of me, yet again stretching endlessly,  never dealt with at all.  

And suddenly I notice that the man on stage is talking about the loss of his mother.  While I regret his loss, that he had to go through this, I realize that loss is universal, love, and that we must continue living, and living hard.  To do otherwise would be to dishonor you.  But, oh, how I miss you, my love.  And oh, how I dread the loss of others dear to me without your love to steady me.  My daughter worriedly pats my shoulder, her touch a balm for my wounds.  How I hate having her see this on her yearly girls' birthday trip.

But then I realize your love is not gone:  it surrounds me in these things you left behind, odd things like the labeled shut off valves for the water, the labeled fuse box.  It lives in this house that I asked God to bless before we moved in, this house where we raised our children, where we loved, where we argued and made up,  and  yes, where you died.  I will not dishonor those gifts, my love, and I will not dishonor your life and those gifts by not living mine.

The man stands up and turns to leave and of course he is not you.  That must wait for another world and another time.  Oh, the stories that I will have to tell you and to get your thoughts on.  Until then, rest easy.  I will be alright.  

Love, Me