- Since 2018, Shelly Jimenez has created elaborate Halloween displays in her yard to bring joy to her adult son Chris, who had severe health issues and was losing his eyesight
- After her son’s death in May, Shelly wasn’t sure she’d be able to continue on with the tradition, but ultimately decided it was something she wanted to do
- “I did this in his honor and for my community, but it was also very therapeutic for me,” she tells PEOPLE
Every year, the Jimenez family packed up their twins into the family van to see the Halloween displays around San Jose, Calif., until their son, who had severe health issues, was no longer able to leave the house.
“He loved the lights because he had such minimal vision in his left eye, lights always intrigued him,” mom Shelly Jimenez tells PEOPLE. “Whether around town or on our many trips to Disneyland, it just always made him happy.”
So mom Shelly decided to bring the glittering lights and magical sounds of the holiday to her son.
Since 2018, their Halloween displays have chilled and thrilled neighbors and visitors. Creepy clowns, disturbed dolls, giant skeletons and sinister beings littered their yard — all to the delight of Chris.
San Jose natives Shelly, 55, and husband Sal, 56, first met when they were teens. When they wanted to start a family, they turned to in-vitro fertilization (IVF). In 1995, their twins Chris and Kayla were born at just 26 weeks.
“Everything that could go wrong with a premature baby did go wrong with Chris,” Shelly says.
He was on a ventilator for almost 10 months, diagnosed with cerebral palsy, lung damage, retinopathy and needed a feeding tube. Later, an operation he had when he was 9 months old left him with severe brain damage.
Their neonatal doctor recommended taking him off life support and putting him into a facility if he lived. But, she says, “Sal and I wanted to bring him home and we found a doctor who was going to fight for Chris.
“We brought Chris home on Christmas Eve 1995, and it was the best Christmas ever,” she adds.
Shelly put college and her plans to become a nurse on hold to care for her babies. Kayla, who didn’t have the same extensive complications as her brother, does have mild cerebral palsy and some learning disabilities.
“She’s an amazing watercolor artist and plays the guitar, the ukulele and sings,” the mom says. Chris, however, always required round-the-clock care.
By 2019, Chris started slowing down a lot. Shelly says, “He just did not have the energy anymore, and the vision in his left eye started to go.” In return, she amped up the decorations so he could “have a ball out in the yard, interacting with the animatronics and bright lights.”
“We didn’t know the exact timeframe that Chris would lose his eyesight,” Shelly says. “I wanted the last visual images in his brain to be of the bright lights.”
Chris lost his vision in 2020 and began showing signs of early dementia. Still, she kept up the Halloween displays for him.
She clicked off each year with a different scenario, using props and animatronic figures, which she outfitted in accordance with that year’s theme. There was the pumpkin and scarecrow year, the frightening cemetery, the 12-foot skeleton-centered display and she even brought the clowns back.
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Last year, she went with decor featuring a swamp monster with its own pond and an old scary guy in a rocking chair. Shelly says by then Chris was totally homebound and had “pretty much withdrawn from everything in his daily life.”
This year, she was going to go with witches. Then Chris passed away in May. He was 29.
“The last few months of his life, he was gone mentally and was just suffering so much,” Shelly says, choking back tears.
“It was so devastating because he was so full of life, never complained and he had such a good life, especially in the early years when he wasn’t sick that much,” she adds. “To see him in his final years, how much he deteriorated mentally and physically, it was just heartbreaking.”
After her son’s death, Shelly’s days were “long and lonely” and she remembers being glued to her couch as she grappled with the void in her life. Then, with Halloween approaching, she thought about how this was the time of year she would be focused on making the holiday come alive for Chris.
Then, she thought, “I’m going to do a display.”
She started it again little by little, and brought back her original ideas from 2018: the creepy dolls, spooky nursery rhyme songs and laughing animatronics.
“That’s how it really began with Chris and I just thought, in his memory, I would do what really made him smile that year,” Shelly says.
Husband Sal and daughter Kayla were happy to see her out doing something she loved again.
“I knew she had to do something. I work, I keep myself busy, but every night I think about him,” Sal tells PEOPLE. “Yesterday, we went outside and people were coming to her. They want to take pictures with her, and they just have to meet her.”
And that means everything to Shelly, who says she thinks the Halloween display is a beautiful way of remembering Chris.
“It got me moving again, and got my mind off the sadness,” Shelly says. “I did this in his honor and for my community, but it was also very therapeutic for me.”
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