We Wish You a Merry Halloween

I don’t usually come out until after dusk. I don’t want to. That’s all. And anyways, my daughter, Allie, and her husband work all day and in the evening they like to see me. So, if I don’t come up from my basement suite, they’ll come down and annoy me.

It’s not that I don’t love my daughter. Allie’s a good girl. Works as a nurse. She’s a really good one too because every Christmas there’s a whole stash of cards from old patients all over the fridge. She really cares about everyone, including her old dad. That’s the problem. She fusses over me since her mom died.

She wouldn’t let me live alone. I was fine. I wanted to be alone. I had my routine. But she said that’s the problem. She said I’m closing in on myself and that’s no life. She said, that with this stagnant routine I won’t even know myself if I’m still alive.

Who’s to say what’s life and what isn’t? I just want to be alone and have my routine, is all.

But, I let Allie and her husband badger me into moving in with them – and it’s really because they wouldn’t stop badgering. It was easier to move in than put up with that incessant nagging and fretting from them, especially since it included me never being able to be alone. At least once I moved in, I made up my cozy little apartment in the basement and as long as I mosey on up every evening to show Allie and her husband that I’m still stomping about, they let me be by myself the rest of the time.

Once I’m up those stairs I might as well take a walk. So, that’s what I do most evenings. It’s nice at dusk; no one to attack me with their friendliness and start chatting me up on the river trail that Allie’s house is close to. Sometimes Allie asks if I’d like company. No. I don’t. That always makes her a bit dejected looking but I can’t help it. I just don’t.

I make it up to her by always oohing and aaahhhing over the house decorations. There’s almost always something decorating the front of their place. Allie’s a big kid that way. She goes all nutty about any holiday. Halloween and Christmas are her favorites.

Tonight, I’m standing in front of her house and am impressed by the motion-activated cackling witch that Allie somehow got to look like she’s flying over the extensive graveyard on the front lawn. What splendid work. I stomp towards the witch and the motion sensor kicks in. The witch cackles and the broom stick veers left and right. Good job, Allie.

I turn and walk down the street to the river. Then I veer into the trail that runs along the escarpment. The lamps light up the trail and every now and then I happen upon a person doing their last walk of the day with their dog. But, the air is chillier these days and I’m mainly alone. The escarpment gets steeper in some spots and in one particular spot, where the height is especially dizzying, I stop and stare out at the dark waters below.

My Lindsay loved water. She was a fish, that wife of mine. Loved canoeing and kayaking this very river. I sigh deeply. The pain of her loss never seems to ease. My daughter, she’s a wonderful spirit. But, she can’t make up for the loss of Lindsay. Fifty years together. No one and nothing can fill the hole that my wife’s death left and the loneliness that filled it. It makes me constantly feel like I’m suffocating in solitude, yet anyone else’s company other than Lindsay’s it insufferable.

I don’t know how long I stand there, with the river below me getting darker and darker. I don’t even know how I get home or get to bed, that’s how disconnected from the world I feel. I sleep through the next day and wake up in the evening. I slowly clean myself up and trudge on up those stairs to find all of Allie’s Christmas cards stuck to the front door of the fridge as well as posted on top of it. I stare at them, forgetting my appetite and I see Allie stroll in.

“Well, you put those out early,” I say, pointing to the cards. She looks confused but then shrugs lightly and smiles.

“It’s only a little earlier than last year,” She says.

I humph. A little earlier? Unless I slept through a gaggle of Trick-or-Treaters it’s more like two months earlier. I shake my head and don’t bother getting into it, making my way towards the front door for my usual walk.

I can’t bear to go back to the river though. I can’t bear the memories that somehow flooded me last night. Yet, I can’t not go on my walk. Allie will fret about why I didn’t. She’ll probably drag me to the doctor’s office to get my legs checked.

I sigh and suddenly say to no one in particular, “I’ll go a different route today.”

Then I go to the back door, walk out, and quietly sit on the single stair that leads into the back alley. I don’t get to see the cackling witch this way, but, I get a peek of the house behind Allie’s. It’s silent and dark. They don’t like decorating, I guess.

I sit there for an hour, lost in my thoughts, then come back inside and make my way downstairs again, satisfied that Allie wont’ be fretting over my wellbeing now that she thinks I’ve gotten some fresh air for the evening.

The next night, I do the same thing. I come up and stare at the bizarrely early Christmas cards all around the fridge, chasing Halloween away before it’s even arrived. Then I go out the back, peacefully relaxing on the dark stair.

That one night…it’s made me lose my appetite for the river. I dread it now, in fact.

The next night I come up to find that Allie’s added more Christmas cards to the ensemble. I suppose some people are those over-planner types, sending out their cards real early so they don’t forget. I shake my head, not bothering to say anything about it when Allie walks in and chit chats with me for a bit. She asks if I’d like company on my walk. As usual, I say no.

Another night comes, and I trudge up the stairs as usual, to find Allie and her husband having an evening snack.

“You want some Thai dad? It’s not too spicy,” She says, her mouth partially full as she points to a plate of noodles.

“Maybe later. I’m full,” I respond.

“When’d you eat, dad?” Allie says, looking ludicrously worried, as if I don’t know how to feed myself.

I shake my head, not deigning to answer to this silliness.

“Dad,” my son-in-law stands up and says, “we’re serious. We haven’t seen you eat in months. You don’t touch anything in the fridge.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I say, walk over to the fridge and pull the door open. My son-in-law is much more laid back than Allie. Why’s my diet gotten him in such a tizzy?

“Alright dad,” my son-in-law says, coming up beside me, “Look, I know you hate it when we stress about you. But, Allie and I have both noticed that we seem to be the only ones eating anything. For Allie, just tell us what you’ve eaten today.”

I don’t know why I’m angry. But, I am.

I slam the fridge door shut and a number of the fridge magnets go smashing to the floor, the Christmas cards they were holding up, falling down behind them.

I start to bend over in frustration but my son-in-law bends over quicker. “I can get them dad,” he says, picking up a couple of the fallen Christmas cards. This just makes me more mad. I’m not a decrepit, old lunatic!

I bend over fully and grab the rest of the cards and fridge magnets off the floor, before he can get to them. Then, I straighten up and start pinning the cards back on the fridge and as I do so the date on a card hits my eyes.

December 11th.

That’s what it says. This card was written and sent on December 11th of this year.

They must have made a mistake…what a strange mistake to make.

My eyes can’t help themselves and drift to the next card in my hand.

December 15th

Another one.

December 12th

I freeze.

My son-in-law is talking to me, but I can’t hear. His voice is just static behind a wall of memories. Behind a routine that is unravelling.

I place the rest of the Christmas cards in my hands back on the fridge and turn to my daughter.

“I think tonight, I’d like you to walk with me,” I say and then I turn to my son-in-law, “you should come too.”

They stare at me, dumbfounded. Then they stare at each other. I let out something between a laugh and a giggle. I suppose those goofy-lookin’ faces are the best way to put a routine to an end.

They follow me out. I choose the front door today. When we come outside I stand and look with amazement at my daughter’s beautiful decorating work. Then, I turn and take a long way to the river with my children. We talk the whole way. We joke and we share simple stories. It’s the best way. I never did like the sappy stuff.

Finally, we reach that dizzying spot on the escarpment.

I look down.

My daughter’s eyes follow and she gasps.

I smile at her and say, “those are the best Christmas lights in the neighbourhood. I’m glad I stuck around to see them,” and then I leave.

Where I’m going to, I don’t know, but I hope to find my Lindsay there, my soul finally free of the routine that tied it to this spot, and the body that’s been lying crumpled in the bushes below, since before Halloween.