TGIF and Halloween in Kai's Corner

I'd like to thank you guys for bearing with me in my last two posts. It's not everyday that I get to have a double whammy like that. I have to remind myself that I'm wearing my grief goggles and they tend to magnify 'normal' situations into utterly exhausting, unbearable predicaments. If it were the old me before Kai's death, I could have probably brushed them off easily. But sadly, she's not here anymore.

I think it's a matter of perspective, which sometimes we can control and sometimes we cannot. What seems to be a big deal to me may be absurd to another person. And vice versa. It's just that with the goggles, my perspective is a bit askew and tinge with all the emotions that come with grief and loss.

But writing it here and releasing it out of my system helped tremendously. As I re-read through them, I'm able to stay emotionally-detached and somewhat calm. 'It happened, so now let it pass,' said my heart and my mind. I know there will be more aggravating situations like these, I mean I can't really avoid them all the time. And I don't want to run away either. I just have to get through it as best as I can because as much as we'd like to exist inside a bubble, we can't. I can't. We are alive and this means experiencing everything (the good, the bad and the ugly) in this life.

Right.

It's Friday, the end of the work week, and the day has been good. The Halloween weekend begins. Speaking of Halloween, my support group meeting this month put forth this question: "How do you feel about Halloween after your loss?"

Most of us in the group felt sad that we will never bring our babies to a pumpkin patch or dress them in cute costumes. One grieving father commented that he used to not care about Halloween or pumpkin patches or costumes but when he and his wife got pregnant, he looked forward to doing some things for Halloween with his son like most of his friends who have kids do.

"How about trick-or-treating kids/babies? How will you handle them?" We proceeded to make an imaginary list of conditions: No babies in carriers. No small toddlers in cute costumes. No baby wearing parents. Children with no full set of teeth will be banned. Crawling babies will be banned. We continued to make outrageous rules and even shared a laugh or two.

But we all admitted that it's hard enough seeing just photos of babies in pumpkin patches, in their first Halloween costumes on Facebook and everywhere else, what more costumed babies in the flesh? We agreed that unexpectedly meeting babies in cute costumes right there in our doorstep could trigger a host of emotions we rather not revisit. So some plan to keep the lights off in the house and not give out candies altogether. "We'll be at the movies or go out to dinner," they said. While others are brave enough to go through with the tradition.

My husband and I fall in the latter category. Yes, we've decided to give out candies to trick-or-treaters this weekend just as we did last year. We talked about it some more in the car when we were heading home after the meeting.

"So you want to give out candies on Halloween," I asked my husband casually.

"Yeah, it would be fun," he said. "How about you? Will it be alright with you?"

"I guess it's okay. We'll most likely have older kids as trick-or-treaters like last year. But you know, there's a possibility that we might see babies in costumes that day, too," I said, trying to make sure he understands what it would mean to us - unexpected triggers, tears and a whole lot of shoulda, woulda, couldas.

"I know. But it would be nice to see kids in their different costumes - pirates, princess, superheroes. It would be fun to ask them who they are," he replied. It seemed that my husband is genuinely looking forward to Halloween. It breaks my heart, though, that he won't be celebrating it with his son.

"Too bad Kai will never get a chance to wear a Halloween costume," I said sadly. I didn't have any particular costume planned for him, but I was really looking forward to taking a bunch of Halloween and pumpkin patch pictures of him, just like what other people have of their kids during this time of the year.

My husband immediately sensed my melancholy and offered a wonderful idea: "How about we decorate Kai's corner for Halloween? We could go to Michael's and get some supplies."

"That would be awesome," I said. It didn't occur to me to update Kai's corner for Halloween. I was busy thinking about Kai's ofrenda we planned to put together on Dia delos Muertos on November 2, that it completely slipped my mind. What a good way to have our son take part in the Halloween festivities, right? I'm glad my husband thought of it.

So we got a bunch of Halloween decor for the front door and for Kai's corner. My husband picked up a craft project that he wanted to do all by himself - a haunted tree house made of foam. He said he wanted to put it together for Kai. But it took him days to get it done. The impatient me kept offering to help him with it but his-I-can-handle-this-craft-project-thank-you-very-much-self kept flatly refusing me.

Having an engineer's brain, he made sure every piece was perfectly placed and glued. He waited for hours to let the glue dry on some parts before proceeding with the rest of the pieces. And it drove me crazy. See I'm a slap-dash kind of person, I have a tendency to eyeball measurements, glue things in one go, while my husband is this methodical and logical person who measures things exactly and follow directions to a tee. So every time I see his slow progress on our dining room table, I had to summon a large dose of self-control not to tinker with it and finish the darn thing myself.

Sometimes I would 'steal' the tree house and put it on Kai's shelf to see how it will look among the other Halloween stuffs I had placed there. My husband would mildly scold me for 'stealing' it when it wasn't even ready or sometimes blame me for messing up the glued parts. Gee, talk about being so attached and invested in his 'masterpiece.' (>_<)

Anyway, he finished the whole thing today and left me a note that says I could now place it on Kai's shelf. Finally! I thought he'd never finish it in time for Halloween THIS year. Hehe. Anyway, here are some photos of Kai's Halloween Corner.

Kai's Halloween buddies. I just love those Frankenstein and winged Vampire candle holders.

A skelebear we found at Michael's. Ain't he cute?

The hubby's 'masterpiece'. A haunted tree house with ghosts, bats, skeleton, spider and a posse of baby octopus.

Little Captain Jack Sparrow and Winston the Octopus kid. The skull that looks like a lucha mask is a calavera I made out of air dry clay. I've a few of them I need to decorate before November 2.

A ceramic pumpkin and skeledunny bear.

Tomorrow we'll carve pumpkins - one for me, one for the hubby and a wee one for our beloved Kai. What are you guys up to this Halloween?