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