The digital clock on the stove showed four, but the dimming daylight made it feel like it was eight. My husband called home a while ago and said he would be home soon. We were having roast beef for supper. I opened the oven door to check on its progress, and a blast of heat made me turn my face away. The metal necklace around my throat began to feel hot against my skin. The beef roast looked brown, juicy and tender.

Tossing potholders on the counter, I turned toward the kitchen windows in time to see Arnie driving his work truck and trailer into our driveway. All the lights and reflectors on his rig looked impressive in the late afternoon’s growing darkness. Remembering that today my husband had had fresh lettering applied on his truck and trailer, I slipped into a pair of shoes and pulled on a coat as I hurried out the back door of the house to see it.

Arnie pulled to a stop under the yard light, which automatically turned on just as I walked across the yard. Stepping out of the truck cab, he proudly questioned, “How does it look?”

Both sides of his truck and trailer displayed the words, ‘Arnie’s Farm Care’. His cell and home phone numbers were listed under his business’ name. “Beautiful!” I exclaimed. “The letters are large and easy to see. The garage did a good job!”

Standing arm-in-arm admiring the truck and trailer’s new lettering, Arnie remembered how long it had been since his last meal. He said, “I’m hungry. What’s for supper?”

When I turned to tell him what I had in the oven, I noticed that the yard light made his beard appear whiter than usual, while the hair on his head was still black, showing only a few silver threads here and there. Surprised, I pointed out, “Your beard is turning white faster than the hair on your head.”

Arnie often grew a beard during the cold months of the year because of the warmth it afforded him while working outside. Giving me a big, scratchy smooch on the lips, he commented with a twinkle in his eyes, “When customers ask me why I’m growing a beard, I tell them, ‘I’m doing it for my wife. With a white beard, I look the same age as her!’”

Playfully slapping my husband’s arm as I turned to walk back to the house, I scolded, “You’re terrible! You love to tell people, even our children when they were little, that I’m much older than you. You need to remember, Old Man, that I happen to be one month younger than you! Plus, I have less gray hair!”

Age is something some people are proud of, like children who are proud of how ‘grown-up’ they are becoming, or slow to age ninety-year-olds who are functioning better than most forty-year-olds. Other people, who put a lot of stock into looking young, fight the wrinkles and lack of muscle tone that usually comes with living many years. I can’t claim to have ever been proud or ashamed of my age, so I don’t know where Arnie got it into his head to tease me about it.

Arnie liked to tease people. His favorite waitresses were the ones who could tease him in return. People working at gas stations looked forward to his stops because he always had something cheerful to say to them. He was a big man, and he had a loud voice, so he might have intimated some people, but when you got to know Arnie, you quickly realized that he had a big, soft heart.

My husband died a few months after he teased me about his whitening beard making him look my age.  We were both 56 years old at the time. This coming spring will be 18 years since his death. I really miss having conversations with him, his goofy sense of humor and teasing!

I like to imagine my life with Arnie as a boat trip down a river. His death was when he got off the boat to stay on the shore. Unable to go ashore with him, the boat continued to drift downriver. It took me farther and farther away from my love. That evening I told someone, “When we had breakfast, Arnie told me…” and I was stunned by the fact that only that morning Arnie had been alive and telling me things, and I would never have that again in this life.

November 24^th was Arnie’s birthday. This year would have been his 74^th. I sometimes talk to him. Does my deceased husband hear me? I don’t know, but it makes me feel better to tell him about things.

I recently commented to Arnie, “You once told me you didn’t plan to ever retire because you loved your job so much. Would you still feel that way at 74 years of age?”  With that thought, a realization suddenly occurred to me. Arnie had stopped ageing when he died at age 56, and for the past 18 years I have continued to age. Now I am most certainly older than him! I stamped a foot and exclaimed, “Arnie, you are so rotten!” Once again, my husband got the last laugh.

***Some cultures consider the number of months a child spends in gestation as a part of their age. Therefore, a newborn baby would be called a 1-year-old. ***