I Helped Collect Halloween Costumes
A Life Shattered
At forty-six, my life stopped at 9:47 p.m.
Two police officers told me a drunk driver had killed “my husband and our two children three blocks from home.”
Since then, I had been living like a ghost—existing but not truly living.
Memories of Home
Before that night, our home was full of warmth.
Mark, my college sweetheart, once set off a fire alarm making eggs.
Josh, sixteen, pretended not to be sweet; Emily, fourteen, read at the table and sang loudly.
“Our kitchen table still bears their crayon scars.”
A Spark of Hope
A year later, donating their old Halloween costumes sparked change.
A little girl wearing Emily’s bumblebee suit said, “Maybe you could be my mom?”
Her words cracked open something grief hadn’t sealed.
New Beginnings
After weeks of paperwork, Mia joined our family.
Now eight, she is “loud, bright, and determined to be a ‘bee doctor.’”
Grief visits, but so does joy.
Mia says bees find their way home by dancing. She was mine.
