Amid regret, the chance to rejoice in ‘the day the Lord has made’

Monday morning dawns gray and windy. The house is dark even though the sun has already risen above the cloud cover that will blanket our day. Evelyn shuffles into the kitchen at 7:30, just as I’m making my morning coffee.

“It’s early, Honey. Wouldn’t you like to go back to bed and rest awhile longer?” This is three or four hours before I often see her awake.

She mumbles “no.”

“Okay,” I say with a sigh as I push the BREW NOW button. “Let me get you some warm socks.” She has disappeared, and I go into the bedroom, but she’s not there. I find her on the couch in the living room, and I rearrange her pillows and tuck her feet under the fuzzy blanket that was a Christmas gift from a friend. The green in its plaid exactly matches the color of the couch, and these days Evelyn is under it some time of every day.

She settles in and closes her eyes.

LightFieldStudios photo at istockphoto.com

I want to listen to the music that accompanies the daily devotion series I’m following, but I also want to let Evelyn sleep. And, frankly, I want to be alone. So I take my coffee and my laptop to the bedroom.

Relative order

I prefer my comfortable chair in the living room. Many mornings I light a candle or the fireplace or both. I straighten the pile of magazines and books and newspapers Evelyn has accumulated on the coffee table and sit in the shadows amid relative order.

Relative compared to the bedroom, that is. This morning I look at the rumpled bedclothes and the clean sheets folded on a bench in front of the bed, waiting for the cleaning lady to change it later this week.

An array of Evelyn’s stuff is littered across the top of her six-foot-long, double-mirrored dresser: a tray with jewelry she never wears; a line of plastic bottles holding body spray, hand lotion, and nail polish remover—standing at attention, waiting in vain to be called into service by an owner who’s forgotten they’re there; three glasses cases, all empty; her new glasses, the ones that correct for distance, but we forgot them yesterday, and I regretted she’d struggle to read the words of the songs on the screen in front; a folded pair of pajamas, the ones she decided she didn’t want to wear last night; and a random, neatly folded washcloth.

I make a coaster of it for my coffee.

New duty

As I describe this scene, I realize I could tidy this room. Add this to the list of items I know I should handle. Almost four years into our diagnosis, and more than two since I have come to terms with it, I’m still adjusting.

Old habits die hard. I’ve always been the piler; Evelyn was the filer. Evelyn was the one who kept things it order, cleaned out closets, organized our possessions into plastic bins in the basement, and asked me for an hour on Saturdays to stand on a ladder in the living room and clean the top of the ceiling fan or help her haul stuff she knew we didn’t need out of the house for disposal.

Along with all I’ve taken on as her initiative has dissipated is this: Now it’s up to me to be neat. 

For all the decades of our marriage, I never gave a thought to how the house would look if company came. It was always clean and usually shining. And I gave precious little time or energy to keeping it that way. As I’ve written before, I am astounded, aggrieved, and ashamed at how little I did compared to all Evelyn tackled while I took it for granted.

I could tell her this now; maybe I should. But I doubt I’d get much reaction. Add that to another list, the long list of items whose time has passed, duties and delights it’s too late to experience now.

Speak up!

In moments like these, I want to find a bullhorn, buy a Google ad, hire a skywriter—anything to get the attention of all those 40- and 50-somethings out there to tell them, “Speak up! Seize the day! Don’t waste the precious moments you’ve been handed. Protect yourself now against the remorse of an old man. Don’t wait.”

But there’s no future in regret. And I realize the moments on hand today are precious, too. I’ll return to the kitchen and make a little breakfast. I have learned the satisfaction of keeping the counters clean, the table clear, the dishwasher filled.

Later, Evelyn will help me empty it, and she’ll willingly put the spatula in the right drawer after she asks me where it goes. I’ll notice a few dessert forks mixed in with the dinner forks in the silverware drawer, but it won’t matter. We will have had the chance to tackle a task together, a welcome interruption to her time on the couch.

“This is the day the Lord has made,” I remember, with a prayer for grace to “rejoice in it” as I get up to get started on what it will demand of me.

 *****

Postscript: Later Monday I was cleaning out the refrigerator while Evelyn watched me. I decided to pull out the produce bins and wash them in the sink. “I never knew you should do this till I saw the cleaning lady do it,” I confess to Evelyn, and she smiles.

“Did you used to wash out these bins?” I ask. She smiles again and shakes her head yes. “You did so much I never noticed,” I say to her, remembering what I had written that morning. “I took it for granted, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She’s still smiling, but her eyes glisten. I hug her and she wraps her arms around me and pats my back with both her hands. I step away and turn back toward the sink, tears on my cheek.

It was the highlight of the day. “Rejoice,” indeed.