I went as the night sky for Halloween. Below is me with the moon I made.

Now the moon hangs in my office window. I rarely open the blind, so it isn’t going to block the view. Mostly I don’t open the blind because if I do, too much sunlight streams in and it’s hot enough already. But also because the view in the neighbor’s house. One of the neighbors used to stand there between our houses, smoking a cigarette. And I’d pretend she couldn’t see straight into my room even though sometimes I’d wave.

But this particular passed away earlier this year, and now if I look out the window, I feel she’s still there, smoking a cigarette she shouldn’t be smoking. She was an excellent neighbor.

So what would the afterlife be like? Could you smoke endless cigarettes without having to worry about the consequences for your health? Or would you no longer feel compelled to smoke at all?

Another friend of mine plunged into the afterlife this year. Just two weeks ago, in fact. And really, I’m not one to believe in heaven or any other plane of existence, but I like the idea of it. Wait. Is that right? It’s more accurate, perhaps, to say I like the language of it. I like the storytelling possibilities of it. I like the speculation.

If Jeannine’s spirit remains in this earthly realm, I imagine she’s sitting on her balcony with its pretty colorful strings of lights. She has a beer in hand, of course. I like to think she’s reading a favorite collection of short stories. And if she figures out how, she’ll be sending me a message from the other side anytime now.

She sent me a voice mail almost every day. It’s how we had whole conversations, and if I want, I can go listen to those messages and hear her voice again. But as of yet, I don’t want to do that.

Jeannine and I had many things in common and one was our love of Halloween. For my birthday this year, she sent me these terrific skeleton earrings. We both like long earrings, and these were beautifully long, silver, and articulated. I’ve gotten so many compliments on them, and I told her that the first day I wore that, but I was thinking of telling her again. She’d have loved to hear how happy I was with them.

Of course, on the other side of the veil, she knows.

What I love best about Samhain is the thinning of the veil. Even before the death of my mother thirty-six years ago, the idea of a veil between the living and the dead fascinated me. What is it about the moon that says it knows the world beyond the veil? The moon has secrets. The moon changes. It pulls the oceans. It spills magic.

Maybe I started to believe in the magic of the moon when I was a child, and I pretended we were racing the moon when we were in the car. You know the illusion? –the car speeding through the dark and the moon races along atop the trees.

Anyway, for Halloween, I told people I was the night sky. It was part costume, part mood. Next October, I’ll wear those skeleton earrings again, and I’ll get compliments. I’ll want to tell Jeannine. And I will, when the veil thins.

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