Halloween

Of all the days I have been dreading since Ariella died, I think I have been most dreading Halloween. Yes, even more than her birthday. Because I can’t escape Halloween. I am assaulted by reminders in stores, at work, in radio commercials. “Come to our fall festival.” “Come pick your pumpkin and get lost in our corn maze”. Parties, Trunk or Treats, festivals. Advertisements abound for costumes and decor and even Halloween cocktails (which may just be how I survive the night). Visual and tactile reminders everywhere of what Ariella is missing. Of what we are missing. I miss the excitement, the anticipation. I long for the days when we would spend hours at a local farm, letting Ariella lead us in the corn maze, visiting the petting zoo, going on hayrides, and of course choosing a pumpkin. We would go home and carve the biggest pumpkin we could find and then roast the seeds until they were fragrant and crispy. I miss having my house decked out with spooky decorations, a seasonal tchotchke on every surface, and the house smelling of apples or cinnamon. Ariella loved to decorate for Halloween and the creepier the better. This year there is not a fall decoration to be found in my home. It looks like any other day, like any other season. Which is apt, because every day is the same. Filled with intense longing and anguish that doesn’t disappear until I fall asleep at night. I don’t want the holiday trimmings without Ariella to enjoy it. But I can’t ignore it. It’s everywhere. Fall is fully in the air and I don’t want to participate.

What kid doesn’t love Halloween? Ok, there are some that don’t but for most it’s dressing up and parties and games and festivals and candy. More than just one day, the weeks leading up to Halloween are filled with excitement for children. Planning costumes, picking and carving pumpkins, events leading up to the big day. It’s a great time to be a kid. Ariella loved it so much it was probably her second favorite day of the year, her first being her birthday. She would be so excited about her costumes that she often had the next year’s costume planned before the current year’s Halloween had even arrived. Case in point, last year she was Hermione but weeks, maybe even a couple months before Halloween she already knew she wanted to be Harry Potter this year. She could be playing in a blizzard in February or swimming in the pool in the middle of summer, thinking about Halloween.

When Ariella was 5 we started the tradition of trick-or-treating with 2 other families, neighbors of ours. We would have pizza at one of our houses and then go trick or treating throughout our neighborhood. Each year I loved seeing the pictures of the previous years, watching the kids grow older and more independent with each passing year. They trick-or-treated together each year from that year through last year (well last year without one of our neighbors as they had moved) with the exception of 2017, when Ariella spent Halloween in the hospital. Last year Ariella had more freedom with trick or treating, leaving us behind while she and her friends made their way down the street. And she was already talking about the next year, when she wanted to go trick or treating with her friends from school, without parents at all. She never got the chance. She never got the chance to increase her independence from us, experience the teenage years, mature, grow up. She never got the chance to live her life as a fully formed person. She was growing up but still very much a child. And it breaks my heart that we will never get to see the adult she would have become.

I want nothing to do with Halloween. I don’t want to see it, hear about it, partake in any related activities, even be in my house because I don’t want to see or hear the kids having a great time, doing what any child would be doing, what my child should be doing. I don’t want to hand out candy and see the adorable kids in their adorable costumes. The chatter and laughter of the children pierces right through me. There is a laugh, a smile, missing. There is one fewer child knocking on doors, exclaiming over the candy she received, giggling through the streets. I don’t get to go home and check out her stash and steal her Almond Joys and then coax her to bed since it is a school night. Halloween is just one more reminder of everything we have lost.

The last place I want to be is at home. I was actually in the midst of trying to think of someone without kids, or with older kids, that would be available to go out to dinner with David and me so we would be away from home, away from the bustle, away from the trick or treaters. Our rabbi has brought dinner to us several times since Ariella died and it just so happened that he texted us to see if we were available on Halloween for dinner. I jumped at the chance and said as long as we we could go out this time, not stay at our house. So for the first time ever our house will be dark, uninviting. No pumpkin lights lighting our steps and no jack-o-lantern gracing our stoop. There will be no candy, just disappointed children if they happen to ring our bell.

This is my life now. Constantly navigating a battlefield trying to avoid landmines. Everything is a trigger but one false step and I hit the big one, and BOOM! It all comes crashing down again. It is exhausting and dispiriting. It is disenchanting to no longer enjoy activities and events and holidays that I once loved. I never used to want to escape from life and now I can only dream of getting far, far away from everything.

Since I can no longer partake in sharing of our kiddos in costumes here are pictures of Ariella through the years, in chronological order. Her first Halloween she was just 4 weeks old.

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I still can’t believe that this is it. Any pictures I share of Ariella will be old, of memories, pictures others have seen before. No new ones. No new memories. No future milestones. I hate this. I fucking hate this and wish it all would just end.