Our First Halloween

I spend fifteen minutes standing by the headstone before I leave. It’s been nearly three months, but three months doesn’t bring me closure, doesn’t bring me closer to understanding, doesn’t solve my pain and frustration.  

I can’t remember why I decided this morning I wanted to come here. Maybe it was all the Halloween decorations around town, all the fake skeletons, fake “RIP”? Maybe I just needed something a little bit more tangible to tackle my own grief. 

Damian sits on the headstone next to me, his steel toed boots tapping the soil below his feet, his cover pulled snugly over his head.  

I want to give him crap, call him out, tell him that’s not a chair. I want to tell him to show some respect, that he’s going to trample the flowers, but every time I try to read the name on the headstone, I feel like I’m going to be sick.  

But I hold my tongue. I close my eyes, take a deep breath.  

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I open my eyes and Damian’s in front of me again, but this time, he has a sheet draped over his entire form, with only holes for eyes.

“Get it? I’m a ghost!” He laughs and maybe it’s funny to him, but it’s not to me.  

I recoil. “Jesus, D. Go spook someone else. I need to go. The kids are getting ready for the neighborhood block party.”

“And where’s your costume?” He challenges me. Before what happened in Afghanistan, I would have been all over this. Like something ridiculous like a palm tree or a taco. I mean, we do live in San Diego.  

But today, I sigh, looking down at my Navy running gear. “I’ll think of something. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”  

“I want to see the kids in their costumes. I’ll come with you.” I don’t argue because I feel him. I really do. He’s lonely, he wants to act like everything’s normal. Two can play that game.  

I start running through the cemetery, and Damian holds pace with me. It’s like when we were in high school, except for the minor details of a helicopter crash, a body bag and a headstone.  

We pass our favorite beach and the shop with the really good tacos, and that place that makes donuts that are masterpieces. I genuinely worried that Damian was going to fail his Navy PT test after he spent one weekend completely gorging on the pop tart donut. I don’t even really understand who can come up with that donut, or is it a pop tart inside a donut? Does the pop tart become a donut? I digress.  

When I arrive at the apartment, Erin is in her room, trying on her Minnie Mouse costume. She looks absolutely adorable. “Mommy, I can’t wait to get so much candy”, she says rapidly, “Braden at school says that this one house on Hannaford Avenue gives out full size candy bars. Can we go there?” 

“We’ll see, honey.” 

“Is Jude going to come with us the entire time?” She asks. Jude is adorable in his pumpkin outfit, but he’s only four weeks old. The weather’s nice enough, but he’ll get bored and fussy after more than a handful of houses. And Erin will get pissed off if she has to leave trick or treating before her friends do. A ball of fire, that one.  

“No, we’ll take him for a bit, and then I’ll leave him with grandma.”  

She sighs wistfully. “Do you think Daddy would like my costume?” Tears spring into her eyes even though she’s trying to be strong.  

“Oh honey, of course he would.” Words won’t console her completely, but they’re reassuring all the same.  

“Do you think he’d dress up to match me?” My mind goes wild with all the possibilities.  

“Sure, I could see him as Goofy.” My wife says, cracking a smile. Her eyes make a quick sweep of the room and I imagine that she knows I’m here. I feel like an intruder somehow, a creep that can see everything they do while they can see nothing I do. I can watch their lives, but I don’t have a life for them to see.  

Damian stiffens beside me. This is terrible stuff, watching your family try to move on without you. But what about when you didn’t yet have a family? No wife, no kids? My family carries on my legacy. Damian just was.  

“Yeah, he would have made a good Goofy.” Erin laughs, and my wife wipes away her tears. “Here, let’s fix your makeup.”  

Jude howls in the other room and my wife rushes to our son. She’s dressing him up as a pumpkin. I know this much. He’s so cute in the little orange outfit, and I hate that I never got to know him, that I’ll never get to.  

I take a deep breath and imagine myself dressed as Goofy. When I open my eyes, Damian is chuckling. “If only they could see this.” He laughs.  

“We should go.” I say stoicly. 

“Wanna haunt some people?” 

“No, I want to check on our brothers.” I tell him, and he nods. “You know we can’t haunt people anyway.” 

“I was a little disappointed in that.”

“I know you were.” I laugh. We visit our brothers, who are, for the first time, too old to dress up for Halloween. To our disappointment, they don't even plan to TP any houses. We clearly failed to rub off on them.  

Then we run back to the cemetery, under the stars. Damian leans back on the headstone he was sitting on before. “Why do you have to do that?” I say, reading my own name so clearly etched into the stone. “Don’t you want me to rest in peace?”  

“Do you think we can do that? On Halloween?” He asks uncertainly.  

“I don’t know. But if we don’t try, are we just going to watch the rest of our lives like movie reels for the rest of eternity?” 

“I keep thinking that if I act like it’s not real, it won’t be.” Damian says quietly.  

I sigh, then get an idea. I close my eyes and suddenly I’m dressed as a ghost. “Let’s own it for tonight. We can’t have a lot of things, but we can have Halloween.”  

Damian smiles and zaps himself into a ghost’s outfit as well.  

So we wander through the graveyard. We can’t have a lot of things in this thing that is no longer our life. But we can have this - two ghosts wandering through a graveyard. Spooky? Scary? Or a final place of rest?