Halloween is one day in the year when young-minded adults step back to their carefree childhood and join numerous children in dressing up in colorful costumes and entering the land of pretend.
Not to be left out, the hosts of various TV programs and their live audiences also join in the fun.
The programs that caught my attention this year were:
“Trick or treat?” That’s the rhetorical question that follows the knock on your door on Halloween eve. Upon opening the door you see giggling, anxious children, eagerly holding out their bags, waiting for you to drop in candy, fruit, or other goodies.
Many adults as well as children enjoy the annual celebration that gives imaginative children the opportunity to fantasize that they are the characters of their dreams – or nightmares – by dressing up in appropriate costumes and going door-to-door trick or treating or attending parties. Some child-at-heart adults join in the fun and put on costumes, too.
While numerous religious factions have no problem with Halloween, some
“Trick or treat?” That’s the rhetorical question that follows the knock on your door on Halloween eve. Upon opening the door you see giggling, anxious children, eagerly holding out their bags, waiting for you to drop in candy, fruit, or other goodies.
Many adults as well as children enjoy the annual celebration that gives imaginative children the opportunity to fantasize that they are the characters of their dreams – or nightmares – by dressing up in appropriate costumes and going door-to-door trick or treating or attending parties. Some child-at-heart adults join in the fun and put on costumes, too.
While numerous religious factions have no problem with Halloween, some
In 1970, Erich Segal’s novel Love Story became a block buster romantic-tragedy film and many Baby Boomers still remember it as one of the greatest tearjerkers of our day. Love stories continue to be an appealing subject in any venue. There are hundreds of movies about it, books about it, and song, after song, after song about love. But an Iowa couple married for 72 years, who died an hour apart, may be proof of what Christopher Setterlund says in his poem, Love is Eternal.
In May 1939, on the night of the day that Norma graduated from high school she married Gordon Yeager. On October 12, 2011, Norma, then 90 years old and Gordon, 94 were involved in a car accident. The Yeagers suffered serious injuries including broken bones that sent them both to the hospital intensive care unit. With their beds set side-by-side, the couple joined hands and maintained their grasp even after Gordon died at 3:38 p.m.
Family members were perplexed because although Gordon was declared dead his monitor indicated that his heart was still beating. A nurse explained to the family that the Gordon’s monitor was registering his wife’s heartbeat through their still clasped hands. Norma died one hour after her husband.
At the request of their family, the couple was placed together, hand-in-hand, in a single casket during their funeral. Afterward they were cremated and their ashes mixed.
Now that’s a love story.
Sentimentalists may agree with what Setterlund so eloquently wrote, “Love is eternal, though breath may cease, love is the one thing, the one part we do not release.”