Memoir 101

by Elizabeth Aharonian Moon

Assignment: Halloween

How do you spend Halloween? the teacher asked.

Write for ten minutes, the teacher said.

For twenty years now, we have a birthday party for a dead guy. Six, eight, sometimes nine of us gather at his granite coffee table in the cemetery, always at dusk (the universal cocktail hour!), always on the 31^st. Cynthia brings her silver candelabra and sometimes a fat pumpkin carved with a crescent smile; someone else brings a pot of chrysanthemums; we “set” the table and suddenly a plate of cheese and crackers is there amidst the candlelight; Arny spreads the caviar on squares of pumpernickel with chopped red onion and sliced boiled eggs on the side. George lets down the back of his SUV and puts in the tape. The Yale Russian Chorus blares out, over tombstones and headstones, over darkening hills and trees—and then—we hear him, the dead guy, our friend Bill, sing out, solo, in his luscious baritone. He is with us, resurrected, and we toast him with our little glasses, re-membering him; he is with us.

Sometimes it's colder than a witch's tit in that cemetery; sometimes it is raining like hell and we crowd under the big black umbrella Nancy has borrowed from her brother-in-law, the funeral director. Once, the moon was so full it almost fell on us as we poured what little there was left of the Stoli onto his sunken grave. Happy birthday, Bill...Happy birthday, Dubs...Happy birthday, Dr. A.--you, the man of many names and faces, you who, in life, gathered us up and drove us nuts and then up and died on April Fool's Day. The irony of it.