If you live in upstate NY, most likely you love fall with the shift to cooler temps, colorful trees, cider and donuts, picking apples and pumpkins.

For me it’s always the transition to this lovely time of year and the opportunity to take my children to the pumpkin patch with their cousins, running through the corn maze, pony rides, biting into warm apple cider donuts, and drinking hot apple cider.

Traditions reflect continuity and family. These fall events were how we spent time as an extended family and stepped into the month of October for birthday and Halloween celebrations. If you haven’t noticed by now, October is an extended big party in our home.

When Nick was diagnosed on July 4, 2008, his cancer treatment not only shifted our reality and expectations, but it stopped those traditions that are at the core of our family unit. It threatened what it meant to be family and the importance of our often being together. Our extended family, which includes all those friends who came to the boys’ birthday parties were together almost on a weekly basis. See Bouncing Around blog 

Suddenly, our family unit was split in half with Luke and Stephen at home, while Nick and I were often at The Melodies Center for days or multiple times a week.

Nick missed those fall activities. So one day, we broke Nick free from the hospital. (Yes, we had permission, and yes the fewer people who knew the better).

Stephen, Nick, and their cousins, Marisa and Alysia, went to a quiet pumpkin patch at someone’s personal farm. Nick was too weak to do much more. Yet his smile and excitement would have made you think that he went to the biggest pumpkin patch ever. We were grateful for these small moments.

Trying to bring a semblance of normal to his disrupted life and battered body, we gathered close that day in joy, not knowing it would be one of the last times with Nick. It was freaking worth it. We went back to the hospital a little bit lighter in spirit but heavier with those apple cider donuts.

It’s not the activity or event of the tradition. Well perhaps it is, but in addition to that, it’s the continuity of love and family. We depend on the fact that as long as we can get together, have wonderful moments, then life is good. We are safe. This is why we are here. To share love and be together. That’s all that mattered in that moment with Nick.

Pumpkin patches and hayrides are a fun way to spend time together. For us, it was a lifeline to bringing joy to my beautiful boy’s life.

And I’d do it all over again.