My Favorite Halloween Memory

My favorite Halloween memory is from many years ago. It was my son’s second Halloween—the first where he actually got to go trick or treating. He was so cute dressed in his Tigger costume, and he was so proud for wearing it. That evening, I finished cooking supper and then we hit the streets. He seemed to know exactly what to do in the art of extracting candy from grown-ups. How he knew, I have no idea. Maybe it was from all those times we watched “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown”. 

Ambling from door to door, neighbor to neighbor, my little son would put his chubby little fingers into each big candy bowl and gingerly place it into his own little pumpkin basket. He was having the time of his life—such a precious memory, but that wasn’t even the most memorable part of the night.

As night began to fall, my son and I went back home to the aroma of pot roast wafting through the air. I sat him down at the small kitchen table and went to wash dishes while he took little baby bites of beef, carrots, and potatoes. I will never forget what happened next.

While doing the dishes, somehow water flooded over my kitchen counter top and headed straight for my answering machine. My (landline) phone rang, the ringer got stuck, then my answering machine beeped. All of a sudden, my father’s big booming voice filled my ears. I was in such shock to hear his voice again, a voice I had not heard in quite some time since he had been gone from this world for several years.

He was speaking to my sister and me. He said he’d been trying to get in touch with us. He had a question for her about insurance or something mundane and completely normal. He then told us he loved us and he would talk to us soon. The answering machine turned off. I stood there, frozen, in shock, trying to remember what he’d said, replaying it over and over in my mind and wondering how on earth that had just happened.

I had owned that answering machine for several years, ever since my sister and I had been roommates in our own apartment. Somehow, my father’s message had been saved on that tape all those years just waiting to be discovered. What a gift to have heard that special message from him out of nowhere. I realized that the message he had left for us all those years ago must have been so far down the tape that it had never been recorded over. Why the machine had started playing at that exact location on the tape, I could not tell you, nor what circumstances must have had to go into play for that to even happen, but I’m so glad it did.

To me, it wasn’t just an old message being replayed on an old answering machine, but a message from my dad to us, from his world to ours. Not proof that ghosts exist, but evidence that our loved ones are still out there, that eternal life is real, that love really does live on, that our loved ones still remember and love us just as we remember and love them. It was a miracle—and one of my most cherished memories.

Walker Lane