Note: Of course, I’m finishing writing about October in December. Life is funny sometimes, and never shows its true autumnal coloring until well after the leaves have all finally dropped.
Enjoy.
October should be longer. Stretched out for another month. Hell, I’ll take another week. Another week to witness the abscission of the trees, their colors in full peak beauty. I wish I could cling to their dying bright light, take in their fire before their cellulose bodies float gently to the ground, laid to rest for the insects and plants of the underworld to emerge next spring.
I never reel in the revelry of October until it’s already gone. I need more time to set up Halloween decorations, to carve pumpkins, to plan my costume, to eat all the candy. Time for the lights of every decorated house, in every single neighborhood, to pierce my eyes. My favorite month passes by suddenly, tiptoeing out into the vast darkness of night.
This past October, my usual energetic Halloween spirit was absent - as absent as the Halloween decorations around Portland. During the summer of 2020, everyone in the surrounding Raleigh, North Carolina neighborhoods began decorating for Halloween in August. Walking around at night was a decadent treat. Halloween held a sense of hope for an unknown future; a distraction from the pandemic. This year was different.
I walk the leaf-ridden sidewalks of my Ladd’s Addition neighborhood, viewing the houses like a Halloween art gallery. Except there were no inflatable ghosts, no twelve foot skeletons, and no lit houses. I peer around corners and down dark streets, hoping to find a sign of haunted life - in the houses, and in myself.
I wasn’t ready for Halloween yet. I needed more time.
As a child, my weekends were spent wheelbarrowing dirt for whatever yard project was underway, while my mother tended to her garden. I hated it, being pulled outside while I would rather be playing computer games alone. I didn’t understand then that the woman who was calm amongst her roses, deadheads sailing to the ground, was not the same one laying on the couch for hours, or yelling at me for playing said computer games.
This summer I grew a pumpkin for the third time in my life, the second time successfully. This growing season brought a lack of pollinators, so the pollination of the pumpkin flowers was done by hand. My hand. The male flowers grew like weeds, while the female flowers were scarce, making timing tricky. When the two were in synchronicity, I plucked the male flower, delivering the pollen into the female stigma. Roleplaying as a human pollinator was a thrilling saga.
By the middle of July, the result was one lone pumpkin. I laughed. Bouncing around from male to female flowers like a buffoon paid off. As I stared at the young green fruit peeking out from the flower, a sudden ambiguous heaviness grew with it: This pumpkin needed to survive. I couldn’t name the uneasy feeling growing within my body.
My summer days were spent babysitting the pumpkin. The unusual balmy weather called for nightly watering and weekly fertilizer additions. For a few weeks, the young pumpkin was suspended in the trellis, hanging precariously by its fateful stem. I used a haphazard tomato cage to keep it from snapping. While I was trimming back ancillary shoots, I accidentally cut the main vine. Panic fell over me - This was it, I would be the harbinger of this pumpkin’s demise. But every morning she kept chugging along, unfazed by my mistake.
She shined bright orange and was ready to be picked by the end of September, just in time for Halloween. The moment I cut her from the vine, I waited for something to happen. I had done it, hadn’t I? I grew a proper pumpkin this time, compared to the stunted one I grew in Brooklyn. But nothing came. She was carved by mid-October. I stared blankly at the familiar pumpkin smile, the candle flickering inside, expecting my October spirit to relight. Nothing. By Halloween, my pumpkin had rotted due to warmer weather, but by that point, I didn’t care.
They say during Halloween the spiritual veil between the living and the dead is thinnest; Where the ghosts of our loved ones pierce through and we can experience their presence. My mother and I never shared many things, nor had many things in common, but every October, the distance between us felt smaller.
During October, the energy around the house felt magical. My mother danced about, as though under a spell, hanging fake cobwebs, and setting light up haunted houses on the tables, little ghosts poking through the ceramic windows. I figured out my costume and read “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”, anxiously awaiting pumpkin patch day. The moon lit up our apparitions, orange Halloween lights and the flicker of the jack of lantern candle twinkling in our eyes.
I like to think my mother saw the light in my eyes during Halloween, and chose to grasp tight onto it. Outside of October, she didn’t know me well, or how to interact with the computer-obsessed ghost who was roaming the hallways, complaining about dinner most nights. The month was the only time we could stand to be around each other without tension, yet we never pulled down the veil to talk about it.
Halloween day came with a therapy session. When my therapist asked what I would like to discuss for the session, I stumbled through words, searching for ways to describe the numb emptiness I had been feeling all month. I switched topics, cracking jokes about growing my pumpkin, about the silly pollination ritual, how climate change made her rot… and suddenly tears welled in my eyes.
The therapy room disappears, and I’m a small child. Before me is the ghost of my mother, a towering monolith, casting a shadow over me and my summer garden. I’m holding my carved pumpkin up above my head towards her. I’m asking if I did a good job. Pleading, is this enough? Is she happy with what I’ve grown? Can she see me now?
The vision ends as quickly as it began, and I’m back in the room. I pause for a long second, staring ahead, tears slowly trickling down my face. Then I just break down.
Lately, grief feels like it’s everywhere, sneaking up like a bump in the night. I can make jokes about ghosts and ghouls and goblins all day long, dressing it up with Halloween language, but the grief never vanishes.
The truth is - my mother isn’t here. She will never see the pumpkin I grew, and we will never again celebrate Halloween together. Outside of October, we only shared anger.
I fear the end of October because of everything after. My father calling to say my mother fell. The lonely holidays surrounded by friends. Shaking cold in my Prius as my sister explains next steps over the phone. The awful last minute packed middle seat flight to Phoenix. The silence between my mother and me, the night alone with her in the hospital. Forgiveness. The clicks and hisses of the hospital machines. And her passing away, surrounded by family.
I hibernate during this time. I move through the days slowly, carefully, conserving what little energy I have to muster for social holiday celebration. I carry the heaviness until after the new year, after my mother’s passing, when the spell is finally broken.
When the days shorten and the light fades earlier, my mother’s death rushes back in, all too sudden and familiar. Even four years later, these memories replay automatically. By the time November arrives, the grief is already there, waiting.
There’s a Celtic belief that the jack-o-lantern light wards off evil spirits, keeping them from breaking the veil. For the spirits of loved ones, the ones who are wandering in the dark, the pumpkin flame doubles as a guide - a beacon to help them find their way back home.
On Halloween night, I light the candle in my pumpkin and leave it burning well past midnight, just in case.
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Thank you for reading. Happy Halloween, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.