In Jody’s mind, Halloween ran from July 5th until the night before Thanksgiving. After the Independence Day holiday, grocery stores would start featuring bags of Halloween candy. Each week, Jody would buy another bag. “You never want to run out of candy” was his mantra. Before I knew it, there were at least a dozen bags of candy stuffed into a kitchen drawer. That was a little bit over the top, given that, normally, we only had about fifteen kids come knocking on our door. It took me a while to catch on. During the day, while I was at work, Jody was snacking on the accumulated sweets! This would continue after Halloween until he had polished off all the candy that was left over.

Jody also insisted that we (read that as “I”) carve a pumpkin. Our tradition started with Jody sketching out the face that he wanted carved in the pumpkin. He would sit back and laugh while I performed a lobotomy on the unsuspecting gourd. He chuckled as I exhibited my revulsion as I grabbed handfuls of guts from inside the pumpkin. Before we knew it, the surgery was over. We would light a votive candle, put it inside the pumpkin, and, turning off the lights, sit back and enjoy a few pieces of all that leftover candy.

Happy Halloween in Heaven. I’m sure the candy is sweet.