S. Lee Manning: I love Halloween – although my perspective on it has changed
over the years.
It was my favorite holiday when I was a child, and when my
children were young. It wasn’t just about the candy pumpkins and candy corn –
okay, a lot of it was about candy pumpkins and candy corn and Snickers bars and
Milky Ways bars and it being the one night of the year that overindulgence in
candy was, well, indulged. But beyond the candy, it was the thrill of dark
things that went bump in the night – without actually being in danger.
When our kids were small, my husband and I enlisted them in
painting pretend tombstones for our yard. Corny tombstones. I Wuz
Murdered. Bones R. Us. Dead A. Doornail. Morty D. Arthur. (Morty was my
contribution – a little sophisticated for a ten year old and a five year old.
My neighbor with the BA in English lit got it.)
We painted a black cat and a witch in a black hat to hang from trees, and every year the decorations became more elaborate. We stuffed clothes with leaves to make a headless man and squirted red paint in appropriate areas. We put up orange lights.
On Halloween night, I would dress in one of my capes left
over from the 1960s – with green face paint and black lipstick to take the kids
trick or treating – or, once they no longer trick or treated with Mom, to scare
the children that came to our door.
When our son, Dean, reached in his early teen years, we
would go with him to the annual Fright Fest at the nearby Six-Flags, Great Adventure – when costumed actors jumped
out with fake axes and noisy simulations of chain saws.
It was all fun, all pretend terror. There’s something in the
human psyche that revels in this mockery of the terror of death – perhaps until we actually experience it.
The irony still strikes me sometimes – that I was with Dean
and my husband at a Fright Fest simulation of horrors – October 4, 2008, when I
got the news that my mother might be dying. She wasn’t supposed to die – she
went into the hospital on Friday night for back pain. Saturday morning, I was
told that nothing was serious, and she would be home Monday morning. She lived
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we were living in New Jersey, and given the distance
and what I thought was a minor illness, I didn’t fly out immediately. I was
planning a visit in two weeks. So, instead, we decided to spent the afternoon
with Dean, who’d been having a bit of a rough spell, at Fright Fest – and
there, amidst the actors dressed as zombies and vampires, with fake fog wafting
over the crowds, I got the call that they were working on my mother, but it
wasn’t looking good.
The difference between pretend fear and real terror was
never clearer.
We ran to the car and drove the twenty minutes home. I tried
to call airports on the way to get the quickest flight I could to Cincinnati.
There was nothing until the next morning.
I was never more afraid.
A few minutes after we arrived home, while I was on the
phone still trying to find a way out to Ohio, my sister called Jim with the
news that my mother was gone. And like that, everything changed.
The year after her death, Halloween wasn’t quite the same.
The pretend graves were no longer funny; the children dressed as zombies or
vampires no longer amusing. I have never since been able to set foot in Six
Flags.
We all know intellectually that life is uncertain, that
people we love could leave us at any moment, without any warning, but we don’t
really feel it – that primal terror at the uncertainty of life. We can’t feel
it all the time – life would be almost unbearable. Instead we plunge ahead in
the belief that life will go on, and things will be okay. That was in fact my
mother’s attitude towards life – everything will be all right - until it isn't. Because otherwise, it’s hard to live. It’s
hard to breathe.
I felt it then –that primal terror –and for several years – that
something terrible could happen at any moment. Adrenaline was constantly pumping. After my
mother’s death and for the next six years, I was responsible for my father, who suffered from
dementia. Every time the phone rang, I’d panic, worried
that something had happened to him. And it wasn’t just fear for my father that
could set me off. I would have panic attacks and trouble breathing constantly.
I have always been afraid of heights – but
suddenly, I had trouble driving over bridges. I’d always wanted to drive a
motorcycle – my husband, an avid biker, bought me a small one – but I was too
terrified to drive it – or even ride on the back of his. Sometimes, I didn't even know what I feared - but I'd feel it - a formless dread of existential nothingness rising from my gut.
But over time, my anxiety began to decrease. I found ways to cope – and to live without expecting catastrophe at any moment, even while remaining aware of the possibility. With my
father’s death three years ago, I felt deep grief, but the anxiety at every
phone call disappeared. Bridges for the most part are no longer frightening. Yesterday I
rode on the back of my husband’s motorcycle – and it was glorious. I sometimes still experience that formless dread at "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" - but it's rare these days- and thankfully brief.
Now, in October, it’s almost Halloween. I feel sadness in
the fall – my father died in the middle of September three years ago and the
anniversary of my mother’s death was a few days ago, but there’s a beauty here
in the change of light and the colors of the leaves. We have several pumpkins
and may get more. I still love the candy – although I’m trying very hard to
refrain from buying bags of candy pumpkins.
I live in rural Vermont, where houses are too far apart for
children to trick or treat, but I plan to go to a nearby town for the Halloween
parades, and maybe I’ll even dress up. There’s still a thrill in the pretense
of danger and darkness – why else would I write thrillers –even if I sometimes
see the true fear behind the mask. And maybe that’s the point.
