By Rebekah Barton
I had a pet a long time ago.
Now, each year, I take time to remember and honor him. Despite his hard exterior, he was a softy. He was sweet and reliable and, unfortunately, he was taken too soon.
I don’t know exactly where he came from, but I’m assuming he was raised on a farm with lots of siblings. He was likely born in the earliest days of summer, when June harnessed the sun and baked the fields. My pet would have started his life as tiny and delicate as a flower. He was cared for and tended to by previous owners as he grew and grew and months gave way to change. Then, he grew too big for them to handle. He got old. He got “ripe,” as they said. So, they decided he wasn’t worth holding on to anymore.
They cut him off and sold him away.
Normally, people don’t choose to seek out pets that have already reached their prime. They don’t want to care for doddery, dying dogs or crippled, cataractous cats. However, I was looking for a ripe, old friend on the day I got my new companion. It was love at first sight. So, I kept him and adored him—short lifespan and all.
He was a pumpkin.
He was a good pumpkin.
Dare I say, he was a great one.
I was a little girl when I first found him, sitting so expectantly in that pile of hollowed fruit treasures. His bright orange skin was waxy and smooth, exactly contoured to fit into my thin, small arms, even though he was a bit plump. His stem was speckled green and brown and perfect, even though each touch was sandpaper on my delicate fingertips. And when I pressed my ear to his ribbed skin and knocked, I could hear my queries answered in his reverberating, echoing response, even though it was in a language I couldn’t understand.
When we took him home that day, I knew it was going to be the start of something magnificent.
And it was.
I think part of the reason for our special connection has to do with the fact that Pumpkin was one of the first pets I had. He was the first creature that spoke to me and stirred my soul, for doing nothing other than existing and experiencing childhood alongside me. I imbued life into him and cared for him in the only naive way I knew how.
I carried my pet around when the leaves started to burn into the colors of death.
I gave him life and personality and warmth when I hugged him.
I let him sleep in my bed on those cold October nights because I didn’t want him to freeze. Because I wanted him to be next to me for every moment of his short life.
I even held him close when the other gourds were gutted and carved as if they held no life. My pumpkin held more life than a forest—and he rooted himself just as deeply into the earthy grounds of my heart.
So, I didn’t let anyone carve or desecrate my beloved pet. Not Pumpkin.
Eventually, however, time caught up with him. Just as October’s frightening and frosty scythe had burned death into the leaves, he eventually came to burn rot into my squash.
I cried when I had to let him go.
I cried at the death of my pet: Pumpkin.
And like with all things, time was unsympathetic. The seasons blended from October’s fiery, death-inducing furnace into the silent white ash of winter’s graveyard. Spring bloomed and wilted into the heat of summer.
I moved on.
Then, we returned to the season of harvest and spices. It wasn’t long before the pumpkin shelters returned, filled with new fruits eager to be adopted and taken to their new homes.
As I looked at these new pumpkins, just as bright and orange and perfect as my deceased pet, I expected to feel sad. I thought I would be reminded of my friend, now long gone and perhaps even composted to give these other pumpkins their new life.
But I wasn’t sad.
Because it was as if I got to see my pet, Pumpkin, all over again.
No, they weren’t the same as my beloved Pumpkin. But I was able to again see bright orange skin—just as waxy and smooth—as well as white and green and bumpy and imbalanced. I could see more perfect stems—some, like his, were speckled and sandpapered—as well as others that were short and long and smooth and uniform.
Even now, I can find a pumpkin and press my ear to its ribbed skin and knock. I can still hear my query answered with a soft, reverberating echo. And I tell myself that it is the ghost of my pet pumpkin still haunting me, still answering me, after all these years.
Pumpkin has been dead for a long time now.
But every year the leaves burn red and orange and yellow in death’s tragically resplendent allure. October always makes his reappearance, and I’m forced to think of pumpkins and beauty and the whimsy of childhood imaginations and naively tender caregiving.
Although I still miss him, I can’t help but feel like each newly adopted pumpkin I take home is an extension of my eulogy to him, my first beloved pet.
Fall reminds me of death, and it reminds me of life. It reminds me of youth and holding a pet pumpkin whose contours fit perfectly into my thin, small arms.
Every October I am haunted by the ghost of my long-dead friend.
But not all hauntings have to be bad, just as not all pumpkins are meant to be carved. Some phantoms provide memories and joy, even in the face of death and the unyielding grip of the past. Some pumpkins are too sacred, too imbued with life, to even consider gutting or carving away.
Some hauntings—just like some pumpkins—were born to be held on to.
So, as I take time to remember and honor him each year when the squashes return and October grabs his scythe, a selfish part of me hopes he will come back to haunt me again. I hope that I will be forever haunted by my youth and the sweet, soft memories of taking care of my first beloved pet: Pumpkin.
