It’s that time of year again: preposterous pumpkin flavors (Rum Chata pumpkin spice?), rubber bloody body parts and cheeky tombstones incongruously perched on suburban lawns, and the all-too-ubiquitous display of arrested development of adults living through (and corrupting) their children. Sigh.

Once I became a parent, I fought liking Halloween. My kids started talking about their trick-or-treating group on Labor Day (grade-school girls!), which often ended in tears and exclusion; our 2-year-old wandered off into the street in a messed-up parent “handoff”; and pillowcases full of candy became sovereign currency for weeks because, unlike my mother, I did not send the bulk of their sugary loot each November to a missionary priest in India (true story). It just seems un-American not to like this $12-billion holiday. Regardless, I’ll be traveling to see our grandchildren celebrate it and All Saints’ Day (two costumes!) and revel in their joy.

With undertakers in my family tree, and being Irish, I’m slightly pre-disposed to the macabre. As kids, Disney’s early black-and-white cartoon Silly Symphony series’ The Skeleton Dance kept us in stiches, where resurrected skeletons scared the skin off animals, twirled in pirouettes, played each other’s spines as xylophones and frolicked in graveyards. In the history of cartoons, this is considered a classic. Death is a riot! In 1952, Americans delighted in The Ed Sullivan Show appearance of the Delta Rhythm Boys performing Dem Bones, a Book of Ezekiel-inspired African-American spiritual. Somehow, the skeleton was cast as our scary, yet jolly, friend. 

But now, bones mean more for those of us on the other side of 50; they become less decoration, more memento mori (“remember your death” in Latin). 

On a recent pilgrimage to Rome, which included a walking tour of the city, our guide often punctuated our brisk pace by pointing out various Latin and Italian signs inset into ancient walls. I was taken aback not only by the skillfully engraved marble plaque on a church erected in 1576, but it’s message: Hodie mihi cras tibi — “Today me, tomorrow you.” It was actually a pitch for giving alms to bury the abandoned dead — look closely, there’s a slot for a Roman coin.

Unlike American skeletons, this Roman skeleton had wings. How very fitting for this angel-skeleton to stop me cold in the world’s most beautiful city, amidst a week of glorious art, Church history, courageous martyr stories and literary lectures, followed by long, conversational lunches, only to be reminded of the fleetingness of it all. Just when I was having such a lovely time.

English Jesuit Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem Spring and Fall provides the same kind of whiplash; the poem‘s gentle title, a delicate question to a young girl, Margaret, about falling leaves, belies the harsh message he longs to share. It starts so innocently:

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Really? Weeping over fallen leaves? Hopkins is compelled to inform her that the leaves are, like the winged angel, nature’s memento mori, a reminder of death. Where fun goes to die — that’s Hopkins. Here’s poor Margaret, just feeling sad about beautiful leaves poignantly dropping to the ground, and he’s here to tell her that what her heart intuits in a vague, unnamed sorrow, her spirit sensed, “guessed” it — she mourns her own, inevitable death. She is one of those fluttering, fallen leaves.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

An entirely different sort of poet, New Yorker writer Dorothy Parker, famous for her acerbic wit and her book Death and Taxes, lived and wrote with a carpe diem spirit — seemingly not worried about eternal life. In fact, there’s an ennui to life’s endless partying:

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)”

We never do — or so we think. A friend who has one foot in the Church is attracted to many of its rituals, declaring “I know I want a Catholic funeral.” Me, too. Nothing beats the Catholic Rite of Christian Burial, with the Final Commendation and Rite of Committal. (Staying in a state of grace through frequent reception of the sacraments is our best preparation for it.) As my funeral attendance becomes more frequent, I’ve grown to love the comforting words:

“Before we go our separate ways, let us take leave of our sister. May our farewell express our affection for her; may it ease our sadness and strengthen our hope. One day we shall joyfully greet her again when the love of Christ, which conquers all things, destroys even death itself.” 

My ambivalent Christian, an accomplished writer, loves to remark, “Deadlines are your friend.” I’m not sure what will make her put the other foot in the Church, but there is a deadline. What is she waiting for? Perhaps our winged skeleton may help — “today me, tomorrow you.” Dorothy Parker is wrong: We do die. Deadlines, and skeletons, are our friends. Let’s hope that we are always working to keep the manuscript of our lives in shipshape, ready to be turned in at a moment’s notice.

Betsy Fentress is the co-author of Pecans: Recipes and History of an American Nut, Almonds: Recipes, History, Culture, and The Bryant Family Vineyard Cookbook.. She and her husband Sam live in St. Louis, where they raised their six children. She writes and is a co-host of a podcast for The Catholic Association.