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It’s a jumbled, faded memory, but two things stand out clearly. First: the adults were crying.
Not just wiping their eyes or getting choked up. They were weeping—right there in our living room. Even the men. Even the ones who always joked too loudly and smelled like aftershave and cigars. That was the first moment I knew something was really wrong. Grownups didn’t cry, not in front of kids. And these weren’t just tears. Their faces sagged, their eyes stared past each other, and they moved like they’d been hit with some kind of invisible sickness. I didn’t have the words for it then, but they looked… broken. Hollow. Like zombies.
There were so many people in the apartment, way more than usual. Our place was small, and my parents always had a steady rotation of friends coming through. That wasn’t strange. But this was different. The air felt thick, like everyone was underwater. They clung to each other, whispering and sobbing and barely moving. I stood in the hallway trying to make sense of it, watching people who used to laugh loudly now shuffle like they couldn’t lift their feet. No one even noticed me. It was like I’d disappeared. Or maybe they had.
Before I could ask what was going on, my mother appeared, pale and grim. She scooped up the baby, grabbed me and my brother by the hands, and marched us to the bedroom. Her voice was tight, like it was coming from far away.
“Stay here. Watch your brothers. Don’t come out.”
What?! I remember being completely stunned. Why was I being punished? What had I done? And why was I in charge of the baby when I was just a kid myself? I started to protest, but one look at her face stopped me. She had that haunted look everyone else did—like her real self had gone somewhere else, and this version of her was just going through the motions.
Time passed in a weird, floaty way. I tried listening at the door, but all I could hear was low murmuring, broken now and then by sharp bursts of crying. Eventually, Mom returned with a tray full of food—and that’s when the second weird thing happened.
She let us eat in our bedroom.
That may not sound like a big deal, but in our house, it was basically a crime. Eating anywhere but the kitchen table was unthinkable. But now? She encouraged it. Ordered it, even.
The tray was stacked with strange treasures: cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off, grapes, chips, cookies, soda. It looked like a party tray for ghosts.
I wanted to be excited, but something about it felt off. Like we were being distracted with treats while something terrible unfolded outside our door. I tried peppering her with questions, but she barely responded. She didn’t even look at me properly. Just said something vague about the grownups being upset, and that it wasn’t our concern. She fed the baby his bottle, changed him, and then slowly, silently retreated from the room like she was carrying some invisible weight.
The longer I sat in that room, the more it felt like we were hiding from something. Like the hallway beyond the door wasn’t our home anymore, but a world where people shuffled around in slow loops, murmuring and hugging and staring like they couldn’t remember what life had been before.
I remember being pouty. I probably snapped at my brother. I ignored the baby. But I gave my middle brother two of the cucumber sandwiches and kept the rest for myself. I ate each bite slowly, telling myself this was how grownups must eat—quietly, in a room full of shadows. I decided right then that when I had my own house, I’d eat in my room every single day. I also swore I’d never make my daughter babysit.
Neither promise lasted, of course. That’s just childhood for you.
Later, Mom came back and got us ready for bed. She didn’t even mention the mess. The tray vanished, and the bedroom picnic was never repeated. The house was quieter, but the strange mood stuck around like smoke. When visitors came, the zombie spell started all over again—hugs, tears, blank stares, quiet voices. Everyone was moving slowly, still floating through that fog. I kept watching them, trying to catch the moment they’d finally snap out of it—or fully turn into something else.
I’d seen pieces of scary movies I wasn’t supposed to watch. And in my mind, I imagined what came next: glassy eyes, slack faces, arms moving weirdly like they didn’t belong to their bodies. I didn’t understand grief yet. All I could think was: The grown-ups have turned into zombies.
It would be years before I learned the truth—that the President, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated. That the whole country had stopped in shock. But for me, it was always “The Zombie Day.” The day the rules vanished both in my childhood bedroom, and in the world at large.