(A photo of my father taken a few months before diagnosis)
I have always had a love affair with Halloween, ever since I was a little girl. Not only is Fall is my favorite time of the year, but pretty much for me as a child, once you found out the truth that the guy in the red suit was really nothing more than your parents stumbling around in the dark, Halloween pretty much took over as my favorite holiday. It also gives me one of my favorite memories of my father, and serves as one of the best ways to explain where I get my sense of humor from.
In November of 1985, my father was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and at that time was given six months to a year to live, so three years later, just still being alive had already proved the doctors wrong. It was Halloween of 1988, and I was getting ready to go to the store to pick up the last bits of what I needed for my costume, which quite frankly I don’t even remember what I was that year but that is beside the point. My father gave me a list and said to me, “While you’re there can you get this stuff for me?” I told him I would and I looked at the list and instantly figured out exactly what Dad was up to.
Before explaining what was on the list, I have to explain my Dad to you. He stood about 6’3” or so, and was a rather big guy, even after the chemo and radiation had knocked his weight down quite a bit. Add to that what chemo and radiation had done to his general appearance, which is to say, he had no hair left, and when the doctors took a sample of his lymph node for testing, they left a scar on the right side of his neck that actually looked like a zipper. For anyone who has seen “Young Frankenstein” I am sure you already know where I am going with this, and oddly enough that was one of my Dad’s favorite movies and one of my favorites too.
Now the list Dad gave me was pretty simple, find some extra newspapers, pick up green makeup, also some sort of scar type make up, well basically in general, the Frankenstein makeup. On Halloween night, my Dad took an old black polyester suit from his closet, I think it may have been back there longer than I had been alive, and put on the makeup. We stuffed the sleeves and the neck with newspaper, so he didn’t look real, he actually looked like some sort of dummy that you make and put on your porch as a decoration. And that was exactly where he sat, at the top of the porch in a lawn chair, perched in wait to scare the trick or treaters.
We put a bowl of candy in his lap with a sign on it that said, “Happy Halloween, Take one.” The porch light was on, the pumpkin was carved, and for all intents and purposes it just looked like a family that had taken their kids out trick or treating and left candy for the other kids. But that was only what it looked like, not what it actual was.
My mother and I sat inside and watched the kids walk up the drive way and onto the pathway to our front door, you could see the terror in their eyes the minute they laid eyes on the Frankenstein “dummy” on the lawn chair, knowing that if they wanted candy, they had to go near it. And many brave souls did, they approached with extreme caution, constantly looking back to their parents for moral support, they reached their trembling hands into the bowl, took their candy and as they began to leave, suddenly they heard the “dummy” speak. Dad would say random things like, “Aren’t you going to say thank you?” “Are you sure you want THAT one?” and kids went running in terror, screaming down the sidewalk, bags of candy flying through the air, all they could do to get away as quickly as they could from the Frankenstein monster that was REAL!
Our house quickly became a popular stop as word traveled among the parents of my father’s little prank. See we lived in a smaller neighborhood, so people knew that my Dad had been sick for awhile, and they were happy to see him out and taking part in one of his favorite holidays. Dad always made my Mother walk the neighborhood with me while trick or treating as a child because he loved to stay home and scare the kids, and pass out candy. Our house always had the cool decorations, and the good candy too…but that year, we had something else….we had our own little brand of terror.
The next morning we saw the aftermath of the screaming children who ran as fast as they could to get away from my Dad’s Frankenstein get up. (Which by the way, with the zipper looking scar on his neck, he really did bare a striking resemblance to Peter Boyle’s Monster from the “Young Frankenstein” movie.) I think we found several plastic pumpkins, a few bags, and we must have been cleaning candy out of the bushes that lined the path for weeks. People talked about that Halloween for years, but sadly it was no more than about eight months later that my Father would lose his battle with cancer. Even on that Halloween night back in 1988 he was very sick and pretty weakened by all the treatments, but he wouldn’t let even the fact that he was dying hamper his spirit and his love of his favorite holiday.
Looking back on that Halloween I think I learned the true meaning of the phrase “live each day as though it is your last”, because that was really what my Dad did. He made sure that even though he knew that his days were numbered, he made each one of the good days count, I guess it made the bad days that much easier to get through.
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