Phyllis loved Halloween. For days beforehand, she’d decorate her library and home and dress up in her witch’s outfits or her many QVC Quacker Halloween sweaters.

The classes would come to hear her literature lesson that always ended with her inimitable, East- Boston-accented, wildly over-dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Telltale Heart’….

“Thump,Thump. Thump,Thump.” “from un-duh the flo-uh”.

She loved Ralphs’ pumpkin cookies, Hershey’s Kit-Kats, and Marie Calendar’s pumpkin pie.

At home, when she’d answer the door, she’d always yell, “Trick-or-treat”, before the kids. She’d talk to each kid or the parent, about his or her costume, even though we usually had a bazillion kids.

And always, “I miss the change of seasons,” which, incidentally, like the time change, I wouldn’t hear again for six months. “Yes, Phyl,” i’d say, oh-so-condescendingly. But i’d give my life to hear it again.