I remember admiring those nurse’s capes in the books I’d read about nurses, too, Lynn. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And, what fun to see kids in your school being imaginative!

Thank you for listening to the show and for sharing this personal story, Pam. What a powerful way to use a cape, costume, and makeup to go deeply into your grief, to face the death of your mother, to embrace death and the underworld. Healing comes as we go through these feelings, rather than try to avoid them. You plunged in and it sounds like you found resolution.

I really enjoyed listening to this show. It was fun, funny, fecund, feisty, fantastical, focused, and touching! Thanks for creating it.

As I was listening to the final minutes, I had a memory flash vividly into my mind. When I was 32, my mother died of liver cancer after having been in various treatments for various carcinomas during the past ten years. I had three small children and was exhausted, devastated, and grieving after she finally died in New Jersey. I had gone to be with her along with my three little boys for the last six weeks of her life. When I got back to Boston, I was depleted and physically ill.

But, planning and dressing for Halloween gave me a break. That evening I put on a huge, heavy cape that had been hanging up in my attic. It was from the Victorian era, edged in black braid and finished with an over-large collar and voluminous hood. I plunged into the Witch. I put on ghoulish make-up, a black dress and boots, and that cape. Immediately, I transformed into a denizen of the underworld covered by a magical shroud of heavy, unearthly power. As I walked with my boys, also theatrically clad, through the streets of Newton collecting candy, I finally felt I was where I belonged. I didn’t speak in my own voice but belted out guttural, loathsome sounds. I was part of a world of vampires, rotting bodies, stench, and howling fiends. For several years putting on that cape every Halloween helped me to deal with the sorrow, fury, and loneliness that I needed to face. I was able to move the rage outside into an altered state of reality instead of dying myself.