This is the first Halloween without my dad.
He loved Halloween - we carved pumpkins for as long as I could remember. And he proceeded to win the family carving competition, without fail. Spoiler alert: he was always the judge. That's a common theme. Dad being in charge of who wins, Dad winning.
Even in the face of turmoil and change, he didn't lose his Halloween spirit. When his surgery didn't go well in 2011, he had been home for less than a week when the holidays came around. Between his month long ICU coma and a stint in a medical rehab, he had waited for Halloween for what seemed like ages. When you're stuck in an Intensive Care Unit (or, as we found out from research, a nursing home) you can develop a loss of time, days, day or night. Dad would ask us frequently if he had missed Halloween when it was only October 12th - and every day after that, as well. He wanted to be home for the holiday. Sometimes the confusion was worse than others: once he got out of bed at the rehab facility on his own (he had been using a walker until that point) and assaulted a CNA with it when he confronted him.
Why? Because he was sure that, in his uncertainty, someone had kidnapped his family and taken us to South America...where they then sold us. Unfortunately, his CNA this evening was named Miguel and ended up knocked over via a walker and a protective dad and husband who needed to get his family back. We cleared that up (and never saw Miguel again) and Dad came home not long before Halloween.
He refused to be left out of the pumpkin carving fisasco when I hosted a pumpkin carving contest at work for our customers that year. He made my mom get a pumpkin and they drilled holes in it, filling it with Dum Dums. He, again, declared himself a winner because, as he said to me "who doesn't want free candy, D-bug?"
Every year, my Dad handed out the candy. He would set up his speakers to play Halloween music, make the kids say trick-or-treat and giggle when the spooky music made a kid scared. This was no exception. He said to my mom he needed his Jason mask and his wheelchair. "Go wheel me out onto the front porch, so I can scare the kids."
I don't think anyone was ever truly scared of my Dad. His big heart (and love of children) could be spotted from a mile a way. Tonight we will have zombie cupcakes, in his honor. Because, well - they're spooky and also dead.
Hey, I never said that we were politically correct. And Jim wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
Spoiler alert: I didn't even carve a pumpkin this year and I think I beat you, Dad. SUCCESS. Finally.
Stay scary, folks!
No comments:
Post a Comment