Many people love the spooky season and go all out decorating for Halloween. Salena Webb of Duncan, South Carolina, is one of them. She put her seasonal decor up in September because she could not wait. This included a graveyard with tombstones and two skeletons carrying a casket.
The adult son of Salena’s neighbors came over one day to ask her to take down some of these decorations. It turns out that his father had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and the family was trying to get him to maintain a positive outlook. Seeing the casket was challenging. Salena graciously agreed to take it down.
Salena’s neighbors are an elderly Russian couple who do not speak fluent English. Salena, a mother of four, and soon to be five, is on friendly terms with them and often exchanges vegetables from her garden and toys for their grandchildren. At first, she did not understand why her Halloween decorations were bothering her neighbor.
"[The son] starts to tell me that his father was diagnosed with lung cancer," she recalled. "And then he started to talk about my Halloween decorations. I'm like, 'What do my decorations really have to do with this?'"
It soon made sense. "This guy is dealing with mortality," she explained. "I am a constant reminder of what could possibly happen if he does not kick cancer's ass and I don't want to cause that stress to someone else."
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Her neighbor often spends time in his garage, which has a perfect view of her front yard. Salena initially took down just the casket, but after thinking about it some more also removed the tombstones. She gave her skeletons badminton rackets to lighten the mood and put the scarier decorations in her backyard.
“It's not about me in this moment," she explained. "There's always next year for me."
Salena posted the exchange with her neighbor on TikTok and it quickly went viral, with 1.2 million views in just a week. She wanted to share a positive neighborly moment instead of a negative one.
