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I was upstairs lounging. Biding time, with French doors thrown open to the breeze.

Undertaking covert reconnaissance on Karen below, checking for signs of life and sound rest. Watching the cricket, then the races, the gleaming thoroughbreds of Wellington Cup day. Doing my bit to keep life tracking as normal, as possible. Waiting. Knowing the odds. Though not yet aware it was the day before Karen would be lifted out of home, away to the hospice, to die in the early hours of Monday, January 27 2003.

Bored with time. With the forty‐minute gap between televised races. Between overs. With time elapsing, I decided to clean out the guttering running along the skiing‐slope roof of the upstairs lounge, the one with the vistas of Aro Valley, Government House, et al. I had discussed this previously with Karen, who advised me to get a young student to clamber up. They would need the work. Had youth and agility on their side.

But now was not a time for young men. Karen was dying and I needed action, a task to complete, resolve. Karen was sleeping and I dutifully retrieved the extension ladder from the lean‐to on the car deck, positioned it on the balcony below the roof and clambered up in shorts, tee‐shirt and sneakers. Hoisted myself on to the roof before bum‐sliding down to the edge of the guttering. Forgetting, in the process, that the midday January sun had heated the corrugated iron beyond sizzling. My knees and hands burned as I tentatively crawled along the length of the guttering, trying to avoid looking at the ten‐metre drop to the roof of Karen’s

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bedroom, the further ten metres down to the bush. With palms starting to blister, knees heavily imprinted with corrugated lines, sweating profusely, I began to feel disorientated, panicky – a feeling exacerbated when job complete I attempted to swing my right leg off the side of the roof, back to the safety of the ladder. My left cheek, arms and chest burned as the ladder constantly slipped sideways in my failed attempts to find a foothold. I clambered back down to the relative flat of the roof near the guttering and pondered my options.

As I caught my breath I was struck with how my stupidity could easily result in me dying before Karen. Tumbling down exhausted and burnt on to the roof of her bedroom below. Landing with a bone‐crushing thump that would awaken her with a nauseating start. Would cause her to call out my name to an empty house. To keep calling until someone, somehow discovered my fall and arranged for emergency services to remove my body. For a moment I felt that death would not be so bad – would certainly curtail the pain I knew was coming. In fact after Karen’s death I no longer fear the terminal, the eternal void, figuring that in death I would be finally freed from the pain of loss, of remembering, and might even somehow be reunited with Karen. Either way in death I will draw a winning hand. Though the variable prospects of dying still incite anxiety, especially in terms of desiring to die well, without pain, in full mental faculty, still engaged in a life lived well, in love and with integrity. As I suspect Karen did, I also envy household cats that stealth away from home to die alone and in peace. Without hearing the cries of those condemned to survive and mourn. Yet at that moment the prospect of leaving Karen to clean up my mess, as she was dying, as she was attempting to stay at home, as normally as possible, for as long as possible, was just too self‐centred even for me. So I ran. Ran up the sking jump roof and thrust out an arm, a hand to grasp the speculative safety of the small, plastic coated flat roof of the upstairs lounge. Missed my grip and slid down, spread‐eagled, toes and fingertips gripping on to the searing corrugated iron roof for dear life. Clawing firstly for Karen’s sake, but in that instant of possible oblivion, for my own

increasingly desperate existence.

I stopped sliding with my feet resting on the guttering. Kneeled and then stood unsteadily, hands on knees, breathing heavily, sweat stinging my eyes. Forced myself to take a moment to compose, to not panic. Told myself that I had to get off the roof or else Karen would never forgive me – not that I would necessarily know this being dead and everything. Morbid humour, there is a lot of it about when someone is dying. Has something to do with relieving the tension caused by the relentless pragmatics of a physical ending. I ran again, clambered upward and this time caught the flat roof with the fingers of both hands and with a strength one finds in complete desperation hauled myself up to the safety of the flat roof. All thoughts of death, pain, loss were instantly back‐grounded as I collapsed, laughing at my idiocy, before shakily finding my feet and clambering down to front door deck.

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Later that afternoon I told Karen of my ‘adventure’ while she was sleeping. She sighed, shook her head in mock exasperation, smiled and said, ‘Well you didn’t fall, did you?

And at least now we have clean gutters.’