Halloween hits me harder than the other fall/winter holidays. It was my late husband’s favorite holiday and his fervor for celebrating it was contagious. He’d start gearing up for it by July, thinking about costumes and often doing research or ordering specialty components for whatever he had dreamed up.
We normally celebrated by rafting and camping for two days over the pre-Halloween weekend with fellow Halloween fanatics.
This year marks my third Halloween without him. I noted last year that the second Halloween hit me harder than the first. This year, the entire month of October felt like a slow build up to the final weekend, with my chest getting tighter and tighter as the month progressed.
I noticed myself feeling more and more on edge as the final weekend loomed. That Friday got off to a rough start as someone I had hired to do some winterizing at my house didn’t show up. I went to work for a few hours but couldn’t stop thinking about how my husband would have done the winterizing himself. It made me miss him intensely and I felt sobs building up inside of me. I wondered how I would make it through the session I had scheduled for the afternoon with my trainer and then evening plans with a friend.
And then I had an epiphany: I didn’t have to make it through a session with my trainer and evening plans with a friend. I could cancel. My trainer and friend were both quite gracious and encouraged me to grieve in whatever way I needed. Emboldened, I decided to clear my weekend and set some intentions.
In the early days of my grief, I often spent an entire weekend sinking into my grief, but for the last year at least, while I’ve felt a lot of grief, it’s mostly been a layer on top of whatever I’m doing. I have given myself a few hours here and there to settle into it and be sad, but it’s been quite a while since I gave myself an entire day to be sad, so a whole weekend to nurse my grief felt luxurious.
I went through photos and videos of our life together, listened to voice messages he left me, and wandered around the garage, touching his workbench and the tools I’ve kept. I still don’t know the names of most of them, but that doesn’t matter.
Luckily, he had a well-documented life. I have photos and videos of him doing so many of the things he loved to do—riding motorcycles, rafting, playing with dogs, remodeling, playing cards and dominoes with his brother and sister-in-law, road tripping, camping, gardening.
He had a knack for turning everything into a competition, and I have the video proof of that. I am not competitive, so he got used to competing with himself. I had forgotten about when we were in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany and he invented a contest with himself, trying to get his wheelie suitcase to do more and more elaborate maneuvers. I watched the videos over and over again, savoring his voice, his hands on the suitcase handle, his cocky explanations about the twists and spins.
I went to the bench commemorated to him on Sunday morning. It was covered in snow and the plaque with his name on it shined. I sat and cried for as long as I could stand the cold.
I wore his fisherman hat and flannel shirt. I put my wedding band on, relishing how beautiful it looked on my hand and how right the weight of it felt on my finger.
A couple friends texted me, offering to distract me and make me laugh. I explained that I didn’t want distraction. I was laughing plenty. Crying, too, but there is often quite a lot to laugh about when I’m grieving. I still don’t know if I lost my breath while watching the suitcase spinning videos from laughter or crying.
I closed out the weekend by attending the one event I had not canceled: a family dinner with his mom and son, my daughter, and a cousin. We reminisced about some of his antics and his terrifying driving.
It was a good weekend, and while I was sad on Monday, my breathing felt much less tight. Tomorrow is November 1, and I look forward to drawing in a deep breath without effort.