Several years ago, I went to the pumpkin patch at my favorite local farm, and picked what looked like a perfect pumpkin, right off the vine.
I proudly photographed it, and buckled it into the backseat of the car like a child on the way back home.
It sat, beautiful and majestic, in the living room, until the day before Halloween, my traditional day for pumpkin carving in the years when I felt so inclined.
This was a particularly trying year, as Hurricane Sandy had just happened and the celebration of Halloween was uncertain. Carving that pumpkin was going to be my salvation, if everything else got cancelled.
I stuck the carving knife in, and was devastated to find that my perfect pumpkin, that I’d been so proud of all month long, was actually rotten inside.
This was devastating to me. I still loved that pumpkin, still was proud of my pick, and treasured the pictures I’d taken of it and the other memories from that day. But I was left to wonder if there was something I could’ve done to prevent it, or something I should’ve seen before I’d picked it off the vine, that would’ve told me I was looking at something that had already begun to rot.
To this day, when choosing real pumpkins for the year, I am wary of anything that brings to mind the pumpkin with the premature rot from 2012. Was it the fact that I picked it straight off the vine that killed it? Was it that it was still a little green? Was it the shape of the stem? The weight? The temperature?
What did I do wrong, and how do I avoid doing it again?
I find myself asking that very same question again today, but this time, in regards to a person.
There was someone at my job that I’d become very close to over the past year or so. So close, in fact, I considered him almost a replacement for my grandfather, who I lost in 2001, and who left me with a void in my heart that I’ve never been able to fill. My interactions with this man made my work days, especially during the pandemic, bearable, even exciting, some days. I felt safe at work, possibly for the first time ever. I was understood and cared for in a way that I haven’t been since that horrible day, just one week before Halloween, in 2001. I am really not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, but it really was start to feel like my beloved grandfather had picked this man out for me, specifically, to finally fix that hole in my heart.
And then, a week ago, it all fell apart.
It started out like such a normal day. We’d been laughing and joking and discussing a scandal that seemed to be happening in my department, and then suddenly, the tables turned. The head of security in my company suddenly appeared and then the police...and it turned out this man, that I loved with all my heart and would’ve trusted with my life, had been stealing, for an extended period of time. Enough to get him taken away in the back of a police car, never to be seen again.
To say it’s been devastating would be an understatement. It feels like losing my grandfather all over again, only possibly worse, because in addition to mourning the loss of the person whose presence had become the highlight of my days, I am also forced to come to terms with the fact that he betrayed me, and everyone. I refuse to believe that the interactions we had weren’t genuine; I don’t think even the best actor could’ve faked some of his best reactions, but knowing that this was all going on under the surface, for at least a good chunk of the time we spent together, has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to attempt to swallow.
And much like with that pumpkin from 2012, I wonder what I could’ve done differently. I ask myself every day, “Why didn’t I see it?” or “Could I have helped?” But sometimes, there’s just no answer for why things happen the way that they do.
The most we can do is try to move forward, and hope for a more bountiful harvest next time, in whatever form it takes.
Stay spooky, my friends. And treasure the good in your lives.
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