I am working as diligently as I can on a new novel, but novels cannot be rushed, and at the end of every work day, as I lay down the unfinished manuscript, a thought haunts me. What if I don’t have time to finish this novel and it is found—unfinished, unrevised, sophomoric—after I’m dead? The thought of people reading one of my “shitty” first drafts is chilling, and it has prompted me to extract a promise from my husband that he won’t show an unfinished work to anyone. He has promised, but if he changes his mind I won’t have any say. Contemplating this possibility has motivated me to remain laser focused.

Somewhere in the corner of my living room there is a bag of knitting, containing a beautiful variegated blue shawl/scarf that awaits my attention. It is half done. I bought the yarn and pattern when my sister was visiting. She’s an accomplished knitter, and she encouraged me to take on this project which is somewhat beyond my skill level. For a while I was fine working on my own after she left, but now I only work on it when she’s here, coaching and inspiring me. When she leaves I slip it back into the corner. Unless I get cracking it is likely to become another unfinished project after I’m gone.

All my life what has kept me getting out of bed every morning is the urge to get things done, to cross things off the proverbial—or actual—list. Long before I knew that I would have an earlier-than-expected death, I was bothered by the thought of the hundreds of books I would never read, books I wanted to read, or felt I should I should read, but understood I never would. Among them are too many classics I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read: War and Peace, The Iliad, Clarissa. Then there are the classics I want to reread because I read them when I was too young, without any guidance like Moby Dick and Ulysses. And there are dozens of enticing books that are being published in droves every week, so many of which I would love. I can’t possibly keep up. It’s a losing battle, but despite knowing that, it’s not a battle I’ve made peace with losing. I will always read books that gratify my soul, but I also still seem to feel a need to read works that “improve” me in some way, teaching me something, stretching and challenging me. I might be beyond improvement at this juncture in my life, but it doesn’t really matter, as I know I won’t get around to reading all those books anyway.

Luckily, I’ve never had a bucket list of places I want to visit before I die, but I do regret having had to cancel a trip to Ireland at the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve been reading lots of Irish literature, particularly the work of women. Ann Enright, Eimear McBride, Anna Burns, Nuala O’Faolain. Claire-Louise Bennett. I’m drawn to the places where these women have been raised and where they write, and the urge to visit has been further intensified by reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, an account of the “Irish troubles.” I mourn the loss of that visit to Ireland which is now unlikely to happen. So, as a weak workaround, I am introducing characters of Irish ancestry into my fiction instead.

Another place I yearn to visit again is New York City, where I came of age and spent much of my twenties and thirties, and where I still have dear friends. When I arrived in New York to attend film school I felt free, for the first time in my life, to be myself. I loved the anonymity the city offered, it’s energy and grit. I fell in love in New York a few times and married when I was there. My friends and my husband and I worked long hours in editing rooms and on the sets of films. We gave great parties and danced our hearts out. We lived cheap. I cut my long hair. Those of us who lived through that period together are deeply bonded and won’t forget those days. Before the pandemic hit, I was in the habit of visiting New York at least once a year, so I know it’s a different city now than the one I lived in back then, but I still long to return at least once more, to walk the streets, revisit old haunts, connect with old friends. Maybe that visit will happen—but maybe not.

I still have plans to learn some new things too. Because I can’t speak, my husband and I want to learn sign language to make certain kinds of communication between us more seamless. It’s burdensome to always have to use a “device” to talk, especially when going to bed and waking up. But life keeps chugging along without us taking the next step to learn what would help us. It’s not difficult to do. It’s only a matter of choosing the online course we’d like, paying a small fee, and allocating the time. Allocating the time though, there’s the hitch. We need to step out of our well-established routines and devote the time to something new. We all know how that goes. It sometimes happens, but not always.

My mother, when she died in her nineties, had done an excellent job of clearing out the detritus of her life, the things she had accumulated that had lost utility and meaning. After my father died, she downsized to smaller dwellings three times. She made sure her finances and business were in order. She wrote and self-published a memoir called Full Circle, full of photographs and tales of her adventure-filled life, making sure she didn’t go to her death with untold stories. I am full of admiration now at how fully she took care of business, stitching up loose ends as well as any person can. When my sisters and I sorted through her modest apartment after she died, there was little we found in the way of unfinished business.

That will not be true for me. I have written a will and taken care of finances, but I have not downsized at all. I’ve decided that the considerable effort of downsizing would take too much of my remaining precious time. So my husband and sisters and nieces will have to sort through a lifetime’s worth of accumulation: far too many winter coats and summer dresses, dozens of earrings, purses and hats I haven’t used for years, books spilling from shelves, boxes of yellowing letters and school papers, all the early drafts of my books along with research notes filling large plastic totes. So many things I could have trashed. I’m not exactly a hoarder, but I am a saver (sometimes a bone of contention with my first husband). I have cherished an image of myself as an old woman in a rocking chair on a sunny front porch rereading old love letters and chuckling. That won’t be happening.

How rarely a day passes when I don’t rue what has gone undone. The emails I didn’t answer. The bits of book promotion I have failed to do. The bathroom I failed to clean. Always something; often many things. I would sometimes love to have the feeling of having sewn up my life, leaving no loose ends. But life soars on, serving up new situations and new problems to be solved. It is in the nature of life to be this way, not static and “done,” but always in flux, messy and incomplete. And honestly, would we really want it to be any different?

P.S. Please don’t read that unfinished manuscript! (But do sign up for my newsletter at www.caiemmonsauthor.com)