The Honey-Do List: Honey Dew or Honey-Do?

Bentley bought a bushel basket of honeydew melons on his way home from work.  

“Here are your honeydews, Sweetie.”

“I was talking about your honey-do list, not honey dew melons, when we spoke on the cell phone,” replied his wife, Martha, angrily.

“My phone echoes like a barrel.”

“Your honey-do list is ten pages long now. Are you ever going to do any of this?”

“Can I make a honey-don’t list for you? I work fourteen hours a day. Most of this, you can do. Me, feed the dog and wash the dishes? Are you crazy? This honey isn’t doing it any more.”

“You are mean.”

“Buy your own cigarettes, too. You are better off without them, if it is too far to walk. They will kill you.”

Martha sat at home every day, eating, drinking, watching movies and chain-smoking, while Bentley did heavy construction. They struggled to survive. Their three teenagers had given up on their mother and moved out.

“We are not your honey-doers, Mom,” they had told her, leaving her no room to argue. “Dad is your honey. He can do everything you need help with, but you are not disabled or crippled.”

Martha, in a state of depression most of the time, was devastated. The empty nest syndrome was not what she expected.

“At least give me some beautiful grandchildren,” she hollered, as they drove away with everything piled in the car.

“Honey, do yourself a favor.” said Bentley. “Clean up your act! You are not the same woman I married. 

You are just letting yourself go. Don’t you have any self respect?”

“Get out of here, you good for nothing oaf!” Martha hollered, as he left in his truck, moments later. “Don’t come back. I am locking the door.”

Shortly thereafter, Bentley suffered a severe injury when sideswiped by a transport truck. Martha died of a heart attack, several days later.

Unable to continue in heavy construction, Bentley grew honeydew melons, the first ones from the seeds of the honeydew melons he had brought home for Martha.

“Honeydew melons, my last gift to you.”