Happy Halloween - Don't forget the Dead

There are a few heralds to Autumn – the geese fly south in graceful Vs across the afternoon sky, the leaves turn glorious shades of red, yellow and orange, the grass is crunchy with frost in the morning and suddenly the smell of cloves or wood smoke becomes intoxicating.  In more mundane terms, it means that Pumpkin Lattes at Dunkin Donuts go back on the menu, apple cider is available at your favorite orchard and Christmas tree displays sprout with riotous abandon in every commercial nook and cranny.

Christmas trees … when the air conditioners were humming just a few short week ago.

There has been a growing outcry about the commercialization of the major holidays, how they are losing so much traditional and spiritual significance because we’ve placed such emphasis on the material aspect of them.  Yet every year is the same, and it feels like there is little done to stem the tide.  We will spend the next few months choking to death on advertisements meant to lure our children into wanting things, instead of wanting time.  Time with family, time with friends, time with loved ones - for no other purpose than celebrating a part of the great cycle that turns slowly on its wheel until it stops for each of us, and then those chances are gone.

Halloween is no different.

Halloween is suffering the same slow death secondary to commercial gluttony.  Please do not get me wrong on this, I absolutely love the fact that it has risen in popularity.  That for many people it is their hands-down favorite holiday, that they’ve turned to this to expend their energy for their own personal joy.  I know that that will mean that this holiday will retain significance for you and your family.  It will be tied in your memory to good things.  But this shift in culture always comes at a price and with each year I see some of the beauty inherent to Halloween slip away, buried under an avalanche of brightly wrapped candy and a deluge of horror icons.

All Hallow’s Eve represents a thinning of the veil between worlds, it has been viewed for centuries as a brief span of time when there is an overlap between the spirits and living – but it is more than that.  It is the Celtic New Year, it’s correlation with death is only in part due to the deceased and the remainder is symbolic for the death of another year.  It is a holdover when agriculture dictated the survival of a people.  The earth grows cold and sleeps until spring, the growing cycle is over.  The harvest begins along the culling of the livestock to support a people through the long cold dark.  It is thanking the land and praying for a future.  It is a time to put away the negative from your year and prepare to move forward, clean and ready for new life to come again in the spring.  You cannot embrace Life and ignore Death, they are what defines each other.

Halloween represents a time to acknowledge and honor your dead – your ancestors, your loved ones who are either newly or long-departed.  The grandmother who taught you to sew, your father and his strength, your friend for the love they gave you while they were here.  Because it is in remembering that we grant them immortality, that we incorporate what they were into what we are and what we want our children to become.

Most of all the “traditions” you see or hear about on Halloween derive from this concept, to remember the dead.  The costumes, the pranks, the gifts of treats, apples, pumpkins, they are all meant to tie us back to those that came before.  To protect us from those who would wish us ill and grant for us a safe winter.  Take a look at how the UK still celebrates Halloween, spectacular bonfires and family traditions handed down for generations – they look to us and shake their heads.

In all the spectacular orange glitter, so much of that gets lost.  The irony is that there are still many Christian families who view Halloween as a Pagan holiday and choose not to celebrate or participate in any way.  That is their right and I might agree, except that the average Halloween in the U.S. it is not afforded any spiritual significance and is thus more of a cultural holiday than a religious one.  So they are protesting something without substance.

It is supposed to be fun, and spooky and a night marked with laughter and shrieks of fear and delight.  It is a dark, delicious celebration of life and death.  It is not just about how much candy one will get, or who has the best decorations.  There is a layer beneath the masks and candlelight that I would hate to see lost forever.

I’m not trying to be a great crusader or change anyone’s mind about anything.  Celebrate however you see fit, because in celebrating at least the day is marked and you get enjoyment out of it – this is often more than enough.  Make your own traditions, ones that will carry to your friends and family and give you your own immortality some day.

But perhaps at some point, when you hear the happy laughter of children scurrying from door to door, or that tendril of wood smoke and dead leaves reaches your indrawn breath, you can take just a minute to acknowledge the lives that came before you.  The mélange of history and souls that resulted in who you are today – just acknowledge that some of those souls may still be around you.  In fact they likely are this night.

After all … it is Halloween.


Better out than in.

I do not normally do this, but this irritated me very much and since I know that I have pretty much no recourse save maintaining my own personal standard, at least I can get this out of my system.  Who this applies to does not matter; it can be applied in some portion to anybody anywhere anytime.  If this scenario is not familiar to you, well then I am very glad to hear this.  And if you are reading this and are taken aback and say “I would never do this” … well, I bet you somebody who has or does. 

I have plenty of friends here that are volunteer providers – I can safely say that this does not apply to any of you, so please accept this as a generalization, consider the reasons behind it, and remember that according to Forest Gump, professional is as professional does – being paid has nothing to do with it.

And do not think that I am being “holier than thou,” there are just as many slackers on the paid end of the fence.  It doesn’t matter what your affiliation, it’s the profession, the vocation that you’re representing every time you walk onto a scene.  Don’t just do your job, do it well.

Dear Random First Aid Squad Crew:

I do hope that I am directing this to the correct person or people, after all – it was hard to tell what (if any) your affiliation or level of training was, seeing as how you all walked into the apartment in T-shirts and jeans.

I am truly sorry that this little old lady had some pain which woke her up in the wee hours and frightened her, resulting in a call to 911 at zero-dark-thirty hours.  Believe me when I sincerely say I can empathize with being pulled from the comfort of a warm bed and summoned out into the chill rainy night.  However I would like to respectfully request that in future, you refrain from saying just how much you don’t want to be there right now, and just how much you would rather be back in bed … especially after my partner and I just spent the ten minutes we were there before you reassuring the nice lady that she is not bothering us by calling 911 in her time of need.

Curiosity leads me to ask if there was anything going on outside of the apartment, because it became a little awkward when most of you stepped outside to continue your conversations – leaving the one young gentleman as the only one inside to manage the patient move and the stretcher … including lifting it.  He was helpful and did the best he could to work with us; apparently he had not read the guidebook yet.

In trying to complete my documentation I’ll admit I’m a little baffled.  I’m not quite certain at what point the patient condition deteriorated so rapidly that you felt the need to barrel down the wet back roads at upwards of 65 mph (more than double the posted speed limit for most of the ride), on what was initially a routine transport to a local hospital.  What I do know however, is that my partner, the patient and your crewmember were all in the back of that truck.  Perhaps you have yet to see the end of that particular ABC Afterschool Special, but I can tell you that it ends very badly and usually with bagpipes.

I absolutely understand the premise and motivations behind the volunteer system, most if not all of the fellow providers started in this field on a volunteer agency, myself included.  I appreciate that there are people out there who are still willing to give the true gift of their time and attention back to their communities.  However the reality remains that just showing up only gets you points on a Glasgow Coma Scale and does very little to actually help the people you’re claiming to serve.

If you are not up for it, if you do not feel like getting out of bed, if your personal issues are going to prevent you from being 100% there for the patient when they need you – then please use the option that I do not have, stay home.

Believe me, I won’t hold it against you.