I Helped Collect Halloween Costumes for Kids at a Children’s Shelter — and It Changed My Life in a Way I Never Imagined
I’m forty-six, and two years ago my life stopped at 9:47 p.m.
The police were at the door, their hats dripping October rain. A drunk driver had killed my husband and both our children three blocks from home.
Since then, I’ve moved through the house like a ghost that forgot it’s allowed to leave—eating because a body insists, sleeping because a clock demands. Before the sirens, we were just beautiful, ordinary noise.
Mark and I met in college when he set off a fire alarm making scrambled eggs. Our son Josh, sixteen, was lanky and pretending not to be sweet. Emily, fourteen, read fantasy novels and rolled her eyes at everything. The kitchen table still carries crayon scars and coffee rings I never sanded away—proof we were here.
That night, they were just picking up pizza. “Drive safe,” I’d said. “Always do,” Mark replied. But the sirens came anyway. By the time I opened the door to the officers, the bad night had already chosen me.
After the funeral—three closed caskets, a neighbor’s hand gripping mine—the world narrowed to silence. I stopped answering calls, stopped opening sympathy cards. I sat in Josh’s room holding his basketball, stared at Emily’s doorway like it might bite. Morning light still crossed the floors, steady and cruel, touching empty chairs.
One cold October day, nearly a year later, I took a bus just to escape the noise of nothing. At a downtown stop, I saw a flyer:
HALLOWEEN COSTUME DRIVE — HELP OUR KIDS CELEBRATE.
Many of our children have never dressed up.
Something cracked. I went home and opened the attic I’d been avoiding. Inside a dusty bin: Emily’s crooked bumblebee costume, Josh’s tiny firefighter jacket, a princess dress that grew with her legs. They smelled like detergent and ghosts of laughter.
They shouldn’t live in a box, I thought. They should live on children.
The next morning, I brought the first armful to a shelter. Then I posted online, knocked on doors, and bought glittery wings because Emily would’ve insisted. By Saturday, my car looked like a traveling costume shop.
The shelter coordinator, Sarah, stared at the mountain of costumes. “We’re throwing a party,” she said. “Come if you want.”
I wanted to say no—but my mouth said yes.