A free denouement

Every time I get in the shower, this idea for the denouement in a novel comes to me. I'll probably never write a novel, so it's yours if you want it!

The story is about a married couple whose families, like everybody's families, have their own ways of doing things. This man & wife (for indeed it is a man-woman arrangement) are always getting on each other's cases -- in a loving if at times exasperated manner -- about the way they do things.

For instance, she thinks it's stupid to rinse the backs of dishes, because nobody eats off the backs! So who cares if there's soap on them? Plus it wastes water.

He calls her on it, and she says, "It is the way of my people."

For another instance, he insists on keeping two bars of soap in the shower, one strictly for face and upper-body use, the other strictly for lower-body use. She pokes fun at him, but he just says, "It is the way of my people."

So, they go through life, kids, ups, downs, arounds. They get old. She's the first to go. Her daughter is at her hospital bedside.

The old lady takes her daughter's hand and gazes lovingly at her through bleary brown eyes. "I have a message for Daddy."

Daughter wipes away tears, says, "Yes, Mom, what is it?"

Mom is fading. She moves her lips, but nothing comes out.

"What, Mom?" asks the daughter. "That you love him? That you never regretted marrying a bad dancer? That he's been the best husband you could ever have imagined?"

Mom smiles faintly, closes her eyes, and manages to whisper, with her last breath, "I always used the upper-body soap for my lower body, too."