It is often obvious common interests that draw people together.  Tracey and I initially become friends through our shared interest in photography and our soft hearts for animals.  We then discovered our common love of cooking and baking.  It is easy to maintain a friendship when you can share recipes back and forth or cute photos of puppies and kittens.  It takes something more, though, to develop a deeper friendship, the kind where you trust someone with all of you thoughts and feelings, no matter how crazy or weird they may be, because you know that they will totally understand.  

We share common emotions around this early part of the month of November.  Many people are coming off of the fun and excitement of Halloween and heading straight into the frenzy of the holiday season.  Not us.  We both find ourselves needing some time for pause and reflection during this first week of November.

From Kris

When my girls were little, we embraced everything that Halloween had to offer.  I made homemade costumes for many years.  None of them were passed from the oldest to the younger daughter because they have totally different personalities and Eeyore just wouldn’t suit Offspring #2, my happy little mouse.  I loved this time of my life.  I liked the creativity of figuring out how to make the costumes exactly as the girls wanted them to look.  And trust me they had their own visions!  I wish I could find the photos of the bookworm costume I made for Offspring #1.  It was a worm in a book.  And not just any book.  It had to be Black Beauty and it had to look just like the cover of her book.  Yes, I painted the cover of Black Beauty on muslin and made a book complete with a leather spine and gold letters into which my little bookworm climbed.  

I enjoyed those days, but I can’t say honestly that I miss them.  I am enjoying reliving bits and pieces of them vicariously as my younger daughter has picked up the mantel of homemade costumes for her boys.  She told me this year that I set the mom bar for Halloween costumes high.  That was not intentional.  And one only has to rise to that bar if you )the mom) and the kids enjoy and appreciate the process.  If one of those things is not true, the hours given to costume making are definitely not worth the hour or two they are worn for Trick or Treating!

Fast forward twenty-five years and Halloween comes and goes at our house without much notice. We did not even pass out candy to kids this year…not because we are mean old people, but because we had big holes in our front yard where plumbing is being dug for our home addition.  I was scared that excited kids might move from house to house across the lawn instead of on the street and might get hurt.

As I’ve gotten older, the “holidays” that fall on November 1 and November 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, have become more meaningful.  As a church musician, we always sing a large Requiem on All Souls Day.  This is an opportunity to remember all those who have departed this earthly life.  Naturally as we age, the list of family and friends on this list grows each year.

This remembrance became much more personal when my dad died in 2014 and his memorial service was on November 1, All Saints Day.  This timing was not intentional on my part.  It’s just the way things worked out.  Dad died on October 17.  He was buried on October 23.  His church memorial service was not until November 1 to give people time to travel.  The at the time having his service on this date seemed to have been based in practicality, I’m not so sure that is the case.  Now each year when our choir sings the Requiem Mass on November 2 (This year we sang Gabriel Faure’s Requiem) it is a moving moment as I remember my dad.

From Tracey

Oh my goodness where does the time go? It seems like every year, before I know it, it’s October. Which is totally fine in a lot of respects, it IS my favorite month after all! There’s something about it that just makes me happy, the changing light I think is my favorite part, plus lots of good memories that have been etched into my brain, and that are tightly tied to the time of the year. Well, that and it’s Spooky Month!

I used to look forward to Halloween all year long. Not the candy part of it, but the costume and decorating part of it. I always made my own costumes (my mom’s bedsheet inventory took a big hit one year!), that was half the fun – collecting the right things for whatever I decided to be. There were a handful of times my costume was bought, in fact my earliest memory of Halloween and Trick-or-Treating was when I still lived downstate in Garden City. What I remember is (and I must’ve been about 4-ish) was that I had the prettiest pink princess costume and it rained – which made my costume shrink up, it was crazy, just like in the movies of instant-shrinkage, lol.

But these days not much happens around here for it. Harrison for some reason doesn’t share my love of Halloween (ugh, I know right?). He thinks it’s smarter to just BUY the candy you want instead of going door-to-door, hoping you get your favorites, in a costume he could care less about. Geesh. I still say he can NOT be my kid (remember, he didn’t/doesn’t like to color either!). So, due to lack of interest, Halloween just kind of slides by.

While it does slide by, it also has been tinged for me with another association, as does the beginning of November. My mom had the stroke that she passed away from on Oct 29th/30th, if I recall correctly. (funny how our minds work for some things in the memory department.) And on November 1st, I had to make the decision to end life support. (It was actually a very easy call in some respects due to the fact I knew she would be very not happy with me if I’d kept her on it.)

I had mentioned to Kris the other day when we were talking about her getting ready for the Requiem Mass, that in all of our connections we had, that date, November 1st, we also shared regarding our parents in very similar ways. All Saints Day and Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) have come to mean much more to me. Especially the Day of the Dead – because I associate that the most with celebrating her life, and in the way she would like best – with bright colors, happy memories and offerings of her favorite foods! She loved fun and food, lots of food! There’s so many funny and fun stories around my mom and food, makes me laugh just thinking about them. And I know she’s laughing with me too.

So, when October goes from colorful and fresh feeling, to starting to look more brown and golden-yellow, I know we are closer to Halloween. And that means closer to November, and all that that brings with it. But also tucked in there is November 2nd (All Souls Day), which brings along a pretty important event – we get to celebrate a birthday – Jeremy’s birthday! So wrapped up in 2 days of the year, back to back, we celebrate a life lived that left the world, and the day a speical life came into the world!

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It may sound as if we are starting of this month on a down note, but, in reality, taking this time to remember and celebrate our parents’ lives brings with it a sense of peace that we both understand and share.  And with this shared understanding comes much gratitude for our friendship.