The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Thomas Gray

Lee’s mom is dying. She suffered an hour long seizure as a response to antibiotics she received to combat her pneumonia. The seizure caused irreparable and unrecoverable brain damage. She is, effectively, gone. On Monday her sister will be there with her, and bear witness as they take her off life support.

I wish I had gotten a chance to know her when she was bright and active, and not suffering from brain damage. I will never know the woman who raised my husband to be the amazing man I love. I met her only after her illness has dented her personality, and she never recovered. I can only thank her for the job she did, as he is my partner, and my life.

I can’t share happy stories with Lee about her, because I don’t know any. Oh how I want to share any with him that would ease his pain and make him smile, even for a moment. I suppose all I can do is share my love and support, and listen to any stories he wants to tell me. I could gather stories from other family members, but I think I will wait for a better time to do that.

It sucks that she will be dead before her grandson’s first birthday. It sucks that she will miss learning who her grandchildren are, and who they will be. I wish she could be here to be a part of it. We have fought a long battle trying to get her healthy and safe, this was not the end we were hoping for. It is what we have been given.

So for her I place here The Epitaph from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray. It is my favorite, and brings me comfort to read it. I certainly cannot compose better words. Granted it is written for a man, but the meaning works just the same.

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

We loved you mom.

It was a lovely Halloween. We took a long walk around the neighborhood, Marlena got tons of candy, and Oliver fell asleep in the stroller. The people around us are really friendly, so we got to talk to our neighbors while we wandered around. the streets in our area are really long, so we had a ton of houses to cover in a three block trip.

One of the little girls wandering around was Queen Padme Amidala, and Marlena was Princess Leia, so people kept saying “Follow your Daughter” or “Follow your Mother” whenever the two of them were at the same house. Marlena kept running into school friends too, which made her very happy and added a small town feel to the evening.

Andy escaped from the garage while Lee was putting the dogs out of the way of the trick or treaters, but she caught up with us after half an hour or so, unharmed as usual. Therefore, as ‘pumishment’ for running off, she ended up joining us on a long walk while we went from house to house. Pain in the A$% dog.

We didn’t get many pictures of the event, but we got a few.

Here is the world’s cutest chubby jack-o-lantern:

A family of goons pose for posterity’s sake:

Sibling silliness:

Marlena braves a spooky house to plump her goody bag:

This morning saw Marlena off to school with her costume in a bag and her hair in closely approximated cinnamon roll buns. I wonder what her costume is this Halloween?

We decorated our pumpkins last night, and ended up with a nice little family of Jaggedy Lanterns on the front porch.

I had a particularly warty pumpkin, so I thought it would best go with a warty witch.

Marlena was insistent that her and Oliver’s pumpkins have a little baby tooth on them. So we ended up with two very cute Baby Toothed Jack-O-Lanterns.

Lee went with his “classic pumpkin” which he says he does every year. Oddly, I think I see that facial expression on him from time to time.

We even stuffed pants and a sweater with shredded financial documents (many Enron jokes were made), plopped a Steer’s Skull (Cause yeah, my roommate happened to have on in the garage) on the top, and added the resulting figure to our Spooky porch display. I will post more pictures once the tricks have been tricked and the treats consumed!

Happy Halloween!!