I’m willing to make a memorial for my wife, but not a bed

My wife and I were sitting on the swing in the side yard on Sunday afternoon toasting the sunset.

It’s a Margaritahill tradition similar to the sunset celebration in Key West but with significantly fewer fire-breathers, sword-swallowers and jugglers. It’s also much quieter than Key West, which means that we can just sit and reflect and …

“When I’m dead you can’t have another woman at our house.”

Yes, my wife shattered the peace and quiet with an utterly random hypothetical dictate. She doesn’t have a terminal disease or anything, so don’t go sending Hallmark cards to my wife unless you want to express your sympathy that she married me years ago, the kind of life-jarring event that spurs occasional dark thoughts.

“Um, OK. How about women plural?” I asked facetiously. Sometimes my brilliant humor goes over better than other times. This was an other time. After a glare that set several nearby bushes on fire, I knew I’d better reassure her.

“No. 1, you’ve seen the kind of junk I eat — there’s no way you’re going before me,” I began. “No. 2, if you get hit in the head by a meteorite or something and somehow precede me in death, I will not only ban all women from this home, but I will construct a 40-foot-high stone memorial to you in the backyard with fountains, an eternal flame and a laser light show after the sun goes down. And I’ll stay out here all the time. I won’t even go in the house.”

“Promise?”

“Oh, yes. It’ll be a great, great memorial. Believe me.”

“OK.”

However, later that night, I began to rethink that whole memorial thing because we got into our nightly debate about beds. We have different views on what a bed should be. I think a bed should be, primarily, a place you go to sleep. She believes it should be the primary pillow storage facility for the Southeastern United States.

When I’m ready to lie down, I can’t just lie down. I must instead disassemble pillow mountain, pull back the decorative cover that otherwise would turn you into a human Hot Pocket and then grab the pillow I use from under my wife’s pillow and throw her pillow that’s on top of my pillow to her other side. That’s a lot of work to do just to relax.

On the two or three days I work from home, I stay in bed about a half-hour after she’s out the door — just enough time to brush my teeth, grab coffee and run upstairs to my computer. In that 47 seconds or so that I leave myself to get ready for a work-at-home day is no time for bed-making. Besides, I can never remember the order of the pillows anyway, and my rotator cuff starts to ache about halfway through the process.

“So you just leave it like that?” she asks, incredulously, a few times a week.

“Yes, and when I’m ready to sleep, I can climb right back in and go to sleep when ready.”

“When I die, you have to make up the bed every morning.”

“Why? There won’t even be women in the house, and only women care about decorative pillows and bed-making.”

“Because I’ll haunt you if you don’t.”

“I have no doubt. Well, I’m at least getting rid of all the pillows.”

“And do what with them?”

“I’ll put them around the memorial in the backyard for extra seating.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

This story was originally published March 27, 2017 at 3:03 PM with the headline "I’m willing to make a memorial for my wife, but not a bed."