Writing from the Heart: For God’s sake, it’s Sunday

I’ve been thinking a lot about death these days. Maybe it’s the dry and curling leaves on the side of the road. Maybe it’s because on the obituary page, they give the ages of the deceased, and they’re all younger than me. Or maybe it’s because we have so many recent losses on the Island. Then again, it could be that my husband, when he’s lecturing the air about climate change, almost daily reminds me how many species are dying off. Or maybe or maybe or maybe …

It’s Sunday as I write this, and I ask my husband if he’ll walk Peaked Hill with me. He tells me he still has work to do on the roof, so I should just go without him. I leave and begin the steep climb down at the very start of the trail. I am basking in the gilded gold of the goldenrod and the very blue sky with the very Winslow Homer clouds. There won’t be many more of these October warm but deliciously crisp days left. The season is almost over. I can feel winter is sniffing fall’s lacy hem.

When I left, my husband was reading the paper by the fire with beautiful light pink — on their way to permanent retirement — hydrangeas leaning seductively out of the vase. And I know as much as he’s in heaven right now with me gone, and the paper strewn about, and the coziness of the fire and the beauty of those flowers, that any minute he will start feeling guilty about the fact that he’s just sitting (enjoying himself), and not working.

I’m thinking, for God’s sake (literally for some), it’s Sunday. The man has to learn to take a break. He should not work today. He should bask like I’m basking. I get my phone out. I will call him and give him a lecture on rest and relaxation and renewal. I will say, “It’s Sunday. You’re supposed to sit on a couch just as you are, and read, read everything you want to read, and then go to your YouTubes about thorium, and then maybe even take a nap, like what a normal person does on a Sunday.”

So I called. I was thrilled to get service from deep in the woods. But his phone went to voicemail, which of course I should have known would happen. My husband’s phone is in the car, or it’s not charged, or it’s in some pocket somewhere. I’m actually grateful (except for when I’m not) that he’s not addicted like I am.

I got home and there he was, the work addict, up on the top of the roof removing lichen.

I said, “Come down from there. Really. Come read the obituaries with me. We can write yours — He foolishly fell off a roof at age 82, and refused to go out into nature with his wife.” He laughs and says, “I just have to finish this before it rains tomorrow.”

If someone were to ask this man what his guilty pleasure is, his answer would be pleasure.

I know he’s going to spend the rest of the day working on all the broken things around the house. And it’s true that the arc of my honey-do list is long, and even though it bends toward infinity, I still want the guy to play a little.

I have one more zinger in my arsenal. I yell up the ladder, “Get down here! I guarantee

on your deathbed you will not say, ‘I should have spent more time fixing the roof.’” And lo and behold, down he climbs.