We have a Halloween costume contest at work every year. Thousands of monochromatic, uniformed employees suddenly come to life for a few days. We also get a $25 bonus for every day we dress up. We toss around extremely clever, mostly implausible, and very inappropriate ideas all year round. The brainstorming is brilliant. I enjoy that part the most.

My first Halloween was four months after Noah died. The difficulty of Halloween after losing Noah snuck up on me. Skeletons, gravestones, and those horrible Victorian looking zombie babies. In the early days it was a sucker punch. My mind would go places I didn’t want it to go. I’d wonder what Noah looked like now.

I shoved all of those thoughts to the side and went all out for my first costume at work. I dressed as a drunken 1950’s housewife. I brought in my retro styled Cuisinart blender, my mother’s vintage Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks…