What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays?

Can Sundays ever feel the same again?

Photo by Imke van Loon-Martens on Unsplash

Note: They are childhood friends in this story, and this piece is fiction.

What does a woman in the countryside do on Sundays?

What made a young woman believe that leaving the city behind would somehow make her feel better?

On a quiet Sunday afternoon in 1953, a British woman named Caroline Richardson boarded a train bound for the Cotswolds, leaving London behind only months after the Great Smog had swallowed the city in its heavy, suffocating haze. To her, London was no longer home. It was where every street carried the memory of her husband, and every familiar corner reminded her of a life that had ended too soon.

She brought with her only a single suitcase and a weathered Bible. Tucked carefully between its worn pages was a photograph of her late husband, the one thing she could never bring herself to leave behind.

Her journey ended in the quiet countryside of the Cotswolds, where rolling hills stretched beneath endless skies, horse-drawn carts wandered along narrow lanes, and honey-colored limestone cottages stood as though untouched by time. Life moved differently there. Slower. Gentler. Almost as if grief itself had forgotten the way.

She was fortunate enough to rent a small limestone cottage at the edge of the village. It was modest but warm, with a tiny vegetable garden waiting patiently behind it and windows that welcomed the morning light. It was enough for a woman who had come looking for silence.

Her first Sundays there were unbearable.

She woke long before dawn to dreams that clung to her even after opening her eyes. Sometimes she could hear her husband's voice calling her name from somewhere inside the house. Sometimes she reached across the bed before remembering she was alone. The silence that followed was always louder than the dream itself.

The rest of the week was kinder.

The dreams still came, but daylight softened them into memories she could carry without falling apart.

What does a woman in the countryside do on Sundays?

Nothing remarkable, Caroline would say.

She tended the little vegetable garden behind her cottage, gathered whatever had ripened, swept every corner of the house until it smelled of fresh air, and left the windows open for the countryside to wander in. Every afternoon, she brewed a pot of tea and baked fresh bread to share with Mrs. Ellis, the woman next door, who had quietly become more than a neighbor. She had become a friend.

Then she would return home before dusk, place her Bible upon the table, whisper a prayer she was still learning to believe, and prepare herself to do it all over again the following Sunday.

What does a woman in the countryside do on Sundays?

Perhaps she learns that grief can follow her anywhere. Perhaps she learns to live beside it.

Or simply perhaps...

She simply misses the Sundays she once had.