Illustration by Adam De Souza
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The second Halloween after our infant daughter died was the hardest. Although she’d died in the winter, the first year was a blur of tranquilizers. Nothing really registered. When the second Halloween rolled around, I realized I could not outrun this tradition forever, especially because I wanted things “normal” for our preschooler Paul. I decided to approach Halloween like an inoculation – I’d run a fever, but I would survive.
In the weeks beforehand, the signs were inescapable. Stores replaced displays of turkeys and tablecloths with boxes of candy and racks of costumes. I largely steered clear of the seasonal aisle for this, the most dreadful, holiday. But my preschooler answered the siren call of plastic swords and polyester capes. Eyes wide and shining, he drew me aside in one store, pointing to a greyish-white mask. It made me think of the face in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, although it was actually the long, white, skinny mask from Scary Movie. I’ve always found that image eerie – the face is so contorted with silent anguish. “Uh-huh, spooky,” I said, trying not to sound shaky.
My husband and I agreed that, despite “the setback,” it was important to carry on. We went to counselling, briefly. We tried “the movies cure” but an unusually large number of films featured autopsies, missing corpses, wailing babies – and those were just the comedies. We kept a low profile as we slowly re-entered the hurly-burly of the workplace and social commitments. We did not get over our grief; we just muddled through it.
If death is a far away destination, Halloween is like a storm of tacky souvenirs you cannot escape. As the date approached, Paul became ever more excited by the pumpkins appearing on neighbours’ doorsteps, the handkerchief ghosts that hung from branches and the front yards sprouting fake tombstones. We had not buried our daughter; we’d cremated her, but we had not yet interred her ashes.
“Fingers, Mommy!” Paul said, pointing to the ground near a fake tombstone. I reflexively jumped back. “Boo!” he laughed.
“When will we return to sanity?” I asked my husband that night. “When will these reminders go away?”
“One day at a time,” he said.
Something I’ve observed about children is that holidays hold a mysterious significance. Even for those lesser celebrations of Valentine’s and Saint Patrick’s Day, I see the local library displaying books on the theme, books that share stories underlying the special day. I see kids leaving the local school waving about their construction-paper crafts and smudgy handwritten drawings. Even my office colleague who pins the silhouette of a witch/heart/shamrock on the coffee-room bulletin board reminisces about the fun she had when she was a kid.
But if I am honest with myself, I never thought much about Halloween – or the skeletons or the macabre and gory aspects that mocked death.
The night of trick-or-treating arrived. Paul the Lion went off with Daddy while I sat at the front door wearing my vaguely clownish getup (multicoloured wig, polka-dot blouse, husband’s great big sneakers). Zombies, vampires and a tinfoil robot came by, then Batman, princesses and faux-fur animals. Accompanying adults sometimes wore witch hats or clown wigs. While doling out goodies, I tried hard to smile. The most difficult visit to take was the ladybug – a babbling dark-eyed toddler who was the age my own dark-eyed daughter would have been. But I kept it together.
Mercifully, the night began to wind down and older kids started coming by, some without costumes. (“It’s an imaginary cloak,” or “I’m really a robot dressed up like a kid.”)
Suddenly, the street erupted with yelling and scuffling. I craned my head to see Little Bo Peep and her cow running after an uncostumed kid who apparently had grabbed their candy bags. “Thiieeef!” The two-legged cow ran under the street light, her neon-pink udder bouncing maniacally.
At that moment, as I stood on the chilly dark veranda, I laughed. My first real laugh in over a year.
Although not a distinctly human characteristic, awareness of death is pretty big in the human psyche. What sets us apart is that we have an attitude about death. We won’t take it lying down. Until, of course, we are actually lying down forever. We poke it, we stylize it, we rage against it. We let our youngest citizens dress up once a year and mock it. Goading each other on to disrespect the grim reaper gives us the courage to take risks as varied as undergoing surgery and flying in airplanes.
In the months after that Halloween, I began dipping my toe back into the weird mysteries of holidays. I forced myself to watch Mary in the Christmas pageant lift a baby from a manger (a wooden box, the size of an infant’s coffin, I noted) without dissolving into tears. On Valentine’s Day, I focused on the love we have, not the love that could have been. I returned to the symbols of other holidays with a deepened appreciation. I helped Paul plan his costume for the next Halloween (it was a toss-up between a skeleton and a knight) and many Halloweens after that.
My dream is that one day, when I am the vaguely clownish oldster opening the door to trick-or-treaters, Paul will be on the doorstep. Not in costume, though. I dream that he will be holding the hand of his own dark-eyed ladybug come to ask Grandma for a treat.
V.J. Hamilton lives in Toronto.