The Chainsaw Perspective

It’s Halloween and I’m not feeling it. I’m guessing all the holidays after losing someone you love don’t have the luster they normally have. I didn’t put out any Halloween decorations this year. On the plus side, clean up is already done.

It’s not like my Mom and I hung out together on Halloween or had lavish Halloween traditions. However, she always knew what our plans were and I always shared the experience with her through phone calls and pictures. I don’t like not being able to share those things with her. Therefore, I don’t like holidays that create these sharable moments particularly much this year.

Despite my personal agreement with myself on Halloween morning to be cranky and ambivalent, I started to have some fun. There’s something about putting a Transformers costume on a sweet-faced two year-old that seems so wrong it becomes right. The boys were so passionate about trick-or-treating and their costumes I started to get swept up in their enthusiasm.

As our evening wound down and we came home, they got even more hyped up to hand out the remainder of our candy. Full Speed would go to the end of our driveway and announce, “Candy for sale, come right up and get your candy!” Then as the stream of costumed neighbors paraded up, he would race back to our green kiddie table and distribute the goods. I would sit back and watch as the two of them would give about fifty-seven pieces of candy to ONE princess (they really dug the princesses) and then I would have to step in and say ‘enough!’. It was pure joy to watch them have so much fun.

I don’t know why, but this cheered me even more. My neighbor dressed in flannel and a scary mask had a chainsaw (with no chain) that he would fire up out of the darkness as the trick-or-treaters approached. The kids were taken off guard and some were genuinely scared. Everyone involved had a good time especially when the kids realized there was no real danger.

The moral of the story is that even if you plan on not having fun, life can surprise you. You will be shocked to find you are having a good time. Sometimes all you need is a man in a scary mask with a chainsaw to put things into perspective (well, you know what I mean).