Autumn

October has always been a special month for Amy and me. Our long-distance relationship grew quickly after my initial September visit, and I returned the following month. We took a hike in the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest and carved pumpkins.

The pumpkin carving became an annual tradition. Amy and I would put in George Winston’s album Autumn and do our best to carve creative and unique pumpkins. When Amy was too sick to participate in 2021 because of chemotherapy, Claire stepped in and carved with me.

It was fitting then that Halloween in our neighborhood was always a celebration that Amy enjoyed immensely. Sussex was one of the first communities in the Milwaukee area to return to nighttime trick-or-treating. Our neighborhood consists of over five hundred homes, most filled with young children in the early years. Practically every home would cover their lampposts with a plastic pumpkin mold. Visitors would often joke that it was part of the homeowner’s association bylaws that you had to display one. If you did not have one, it was the exception. It makes for a festival type atmosphere as the community celebrates on the last Saturday night before Halloween.

Besides the array of costumes, neighbors would decorate floats with themes ranging from Disco Inferno—complete with a mirrored disco ball—to hay rides and even a Shaggy and Scooby Doo themed dune buggy. They would drive through the neighborhood to cheers and shouts.

Friends and neighbors would gather around fire pits in the driveway and hand out candy. In the early years, the number of trick-or-treaters would fall somewhere between 250 and 300 revelers. One year, I talked to a new resident of the subdivision about the massive number of trick-or-treaters and advised them to stock up on the candy. They accepted my advice with a polite nod but admitted later they had to make a candy run to the nearby Walgreens for additional supplies.

Amy enjoyed working on the costumes for each of the kids, but her creativity always seemed to be more focused on Claire. She dressed her as an angel, a skunk, Barney, a rock star, and an Eskimo. Her pièce de résistance, however, was when she dressed Claire as a picnic table, complete with grapes, hot dogs, mustard and ketchup bottles, plates and utensils, and a giant ant crawling up the tablecloth.

Claire was especially mortified by the picnic table costume but was cajoled by her mother to don it two separate years. The only benefit to Claire was that many homes gave her extra candy for her creativity and originality!

When the kids were younger, Amy’s parents always enjoyed joining us and the neighbors to give out the candy while we escorted the kids on their candy route. As the neighborhood kids grew older and some would trick-or-treat without costumes, Amy would always challenge them to declare their costume to get their candy. Although this annoyed many of these teenagers, they would often offer up some witty replies, and she would always reward them with a couple pieces of candy.

One year, our friends Kasey, Louann, Carol, and Kay helped launch a new tradition, Spooky Sussex. This event is typically held a couple of weeks before Halloween and features hay rides, warm cider, games, and a spooky trail through the woods at the Sussex Village Park. The spooky trail features multiple themed candy stops for the kids. The first year of the event they all donned animal themed hats, but subsequent years got more elaborate with a witch-themed stop and then the following year a stop themed from the movie Despicable Me. They recruited the Village of Sussex attorney to dress as Gru, and they decked themselves as his minions. It was a smashing success thanks in part to Gru stealing the show with an epic performance that night.

As we near the one-year mark since Amy’s passing, I want to remind everyone of Amy’s love for autumn. She would not want us to dwell on this occasion with melancholy and sorrow, but to embrace it with joviality and joy!