For most of the years I knew him, Al Delcupolo never sat still. He was polishing his car, or sweeping the driveway, or shoveling snow, or hosing down his lawnmower, or cleaning the gutters, or digging, or climbing, or hacking at some shrub, or up on his roof - a thing that drove his wife, Katherine, and me crazy.

He wasn't a spring chicken. He was in his 60s and then in his 70s and still climbing ladders.

I saw my neighbor, Al, sitting in his driveway, propped up against his wheelbarrow, still as stone. I thought he was dead. Who sits in a driveway? Who puts down his rake or climbs off a ladder or stops mowing his lawn to rest for 10 minutes, to close his eyes and drop his head and let his body go limp and do absolutely nothing? Al does. And he's taught his big black dog Dante to do the same.

I walk cross the street to chide Al about washing his car on the first nice day in months.

"What," he says, "you've never seen me out here in the cold? You never saw me in my rubber gloves? I've been doing this all winter long. Where've you been?”

I must have been in the kitchen still sipping coffee or upstairs getting dressed. He must have done all his rubbing and scrubbing long before dawn because I totally missed him in his rubber gloves. But there is no missing him this day. He is in his…