Sentimental Halloween

Someone get a shovel, I'm digging up the past. My October has been a bit different then everyone else's.

My grandmother lived in the hospital. She moved in there the day after I was born, and never got to leave. She had MS, but she died of pneumonia on December 22, 2006. We didn't have Christmas that year.

My grandmother's birthday was Halloween, so each year instead of going trick or treating or going to school for a halloween party (alright, sometimes we got back in time to go trick or treating), we would go to the hospitals, dress-up in our costumes and visit patients rooms. Usually we had some kind of a theme. One year we were the Wizard of Oz (I was the scarecrow) and other times we were Toy Story. Regardless, walking around West Park Hospital is the only real Halloween memory I have.

That hospital was almost specifically for end of life care. My grandmother fought the odds and lived there for almost 13 years. Every time we went to visit her, she'd have a new roommate.

Walking around the hospital dressed up like Batman was enlightening to say the least. You new from the look on everyone's face that the joy was unreal.

I think that's one of the reasons that I am the way I am. I try to be as positive as possible at all times, and I never second guess someone else's pain.

I didn't get to go trick or treating very often as a kid, but I did make a lot of palliative patients smile.