Early in the morning the sound of heavy rain on the skylight awakened me. I rolled over and went back to sleep until the alarm awakened me for good.

The morning’s drive east on Interstate 195 was spectacularly beautiful: gray, low clouds, light spattering rain, trees and bushes along the highway vividly yellow and red. One tree, a particularly transcendent shade of red, standing next to the highway, almost made me drive into the next lane.

I arrived at the cemetery twenty minutes early. About ten cars were already parked near the grave site, people sitting inside them to avoid the rain. The man who had died loved the outdoors, and really the weather was perfect: about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, light drizzle, soft breeze blowing occasional drops of rain from trees. The wet weather brought out the yellows and reds of changing leaves; but most of the leaves in the cemetery were still green, and the wetness made them look lush and verdant.

At the reception after the service, I talked with someone who repeated the truism: a sudden death is easier on the person who dies, harder on the family and friends who have to cope with the aftermath. Then one’s mind takes up the other possibilities. If you knew you couldn’t die suddenly (that is, with no real knowledge of your death except perhaps a realization that came simultaneously with death), which would you prefer: to spend a week dying and suffering (with the sudden blinding realization that this is it), or to spend six months dying and suffering (time enough perhaps to tie up some loose ends), or to spend twenty years gradually declining? Then: Which option would you prefer for someone you love?

I had to rush back to the church to check in with the secretary before she left. The fire alarm panel at the church failed suddenly and spectacularly last week. The panel sent an alarm to the fire department, but didn’t sound the alarms in the building, so when several fire trucks showed up the people in the building didn’t know what was happening. No fire, but then the fire department couldn’t reset the panel, leaving our building without an alarm for a week until we could get a replacement installed. I discovered that I would rather have a working fire alarm panel, and know when the building was burning down, than not now at all.

By the time I got back home, it was half past one. I desperately needed a walk, and the rain was holding off at least for the moment. When I got down to the waterfront, I saw two red triangular flags flying above the Wharfinger’s Building: gale warning. But on my walk across the bridges to Fairhaven, I felt very little wind.

On the way back, I stopped on Pope’s Island, bought the New York Times, and sat down in Dunkin Donuts to drink some coffee, eat a doughnut, and read the paper. The news from North Korea is not good. Half an hour later, when I thought to look out the window, a rising wind was blowing rain at the big plate glass window. The predicted storm had arrived. I started walking back.

The wind blew hard out of the south. When I got up onto the swing span bridge, there was nothing south of me to slow the wind. The wind blew raindrops at thirty degrees from the horizontal; the raindrops looked like lines not drops, the way rain is pictured in the old Japanese woodblock prints. Rain hit my face and ran down into the corners of my mouth, and it tasted of salt; the wind so strong it picked up sea-spume and mixed it with the rain.

When I got home, my trousers were soaked, but my new raincoat had kept the upper half of me dry. I quickly changed and got ready to leave for a dinner engagement in Brookline.

Driving in nightmarish traffic: an hour-and-a-quarter drive took two and a half hours. Rain so thick it got foggy, the blower in my car couldn’t keep up with the dampness, I had to keep swiping the inside of the windshield to be able to see. Trying to drive defensively. Parked the car, got on the subway, the usual delays. Time to think.

Time to think.

By the time the dinner was over, the cold front had moved in, and I pulled up the hood of my raincoat trying to stay warm. But I could breathe freely again. The cold awakened me in the middle of the night. I didn’t come awake enough to close the window, but I managed to pull another comforter over me and then, snug and warm, slept until late morning.