Fit Month for Dying (5 page)

Greg comes rushing into the room, followed by Philomena. She looks like the apparition of one who has already crossed over. She is dressed in a white flannel nightgown and her head is covered with a baby-blue mesh hairnet. A large red rosary dangles from her fingers. She hurries to Hubert's side and bends down to feel his forehead. “Oh Holy Mother of God, he's gone all right,” she says, confirming what we already know. She murmurs to him. “But you had the candle. Thanks be to God fer that much.”

She gently draws two fingers down over his eyes and lips so he is no longer staring open-mouthed at the ceiling. I ease the candle holder with the stub of candle out of his stiffening hand and snuff out the tiny flame that is already singeing the soft flesh between my thumb and finger. I lay the flattened remains of the candle along with the holder on the bedside table, making sure they are resting on Paddy's empty cigarette packet. Philomena appears not to have noticed the smallness of the candle. But since I can't be certain, and just in case she brings the subject up later on, I begin to construct a lie. Licking my burnt flesh, I latch on to Danny's excuse — I will say I lit the candle early on so I would be sure to have it ready in time.

I pick up the slop pail to take it out of the room and with a nod of my head I indicate to the others, who are now bunched up in the doorway, that we should give Philomena some time alone with Hubert. But just as I am crossing the floor, Philomena barks an order that stops me in mid-stride.

“Stay here! All of you! We're saying the rosary! And a prayer for the dead and dying. Not like he'll be having a Requiem Mass. Not like there's a minister here belonging to his religion to give him a church send-off.”

Greg, knowing the inebriated state of Paddy and Danny and sensing a fiasco in the making, insists that the funeral parlour should be called right away. If rigor mortis sets in, it will be difficult to get his father's suit coat on him. Philomena flings away his reasoning.

“That's a bunch of horseshit,” she says, already dropping to her knees and beckoning over her shoulder for us to do likewise. “Everyone knows that when you're dressing the dead you always slits the coat up the back. After it's on, you reefs it back together with yarn. Or duct tape. I've seen it done hundreds of times.”

With a grand gesture she unfurls her rosary to permit her to hold the crucifix in her hand, and with it she makes an expansive sign of the cross from forehead to chest. I watch the red dangling beads. They remind me of the necklaces I used to make out of the blood-red partridgeberries that Grandmother used to pick every fall on the barrens behind the Cove.

“The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.” Philomena intones. “The first Sorrowful Mystery, the Agony in the Garden.” Danny and Paddy squat in the doorway. Greg crowds in beside them. After taking time out to put the slop pail in the hall, I kneel just behind Greg. “
Hail Mary full of Grace
,” Philomena says loudly, taking the first ten Hail Marys for herself. She finishes with a flourish, “
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit
.” She points with the crucifix at Greg, indicating it is his turn. As soon as he finishes, I rush in to take the next decade, and then it is Paddy's turn. He mumbles his way, fuzzy and indistinct, through the required ten Hail Marys. “
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit
,” he ends, reviving himself to say this part extra loud and extra clear, knowing it is Danny's turn next and hoping to rouse him out of his stupor. As an added precaution, he elbows him in the ribs.

His efforts are wasted. Either Danny has forgotten how to say the Mysteries of the Rosary or the beer has frozen his vocal cords, because when Philomena says, “The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Crucifixion,” Danny just stares at his father's corpse, his mouth making sounds his lips don't form. Greg quickly pinch-hits for him and, without missing a beat, begins the last decade of Hail Marys. The minute he finishes, he and I exchange relieved glances; as bedraggled a performance as it was, it, too, seems to have escaped Philomena's censure.

Chapter Two

Hubert has to be buried in the rarely used Protestant cemetery in the Cove. He had wanted to be buried down the bay beside his parents, but because that community had fallen victim to a government resettlement project, it is now a ghost village, and its cemetery is closed.

On the morning of the funeral I take the dress I intend to wear to the burial out of my suitcase and bring it to the kitchen to iron out the wrinkles. Philomena lets her eyes roam over the dress, sizing it up, and then gives me a look scathing enough to unnerve Jezebel.

“
That's
what yer wearin'? A red flowered dress?” She twists her broad shoulders. “Won't do much mournin' in that gaudy getup.”

“What difference?” I say. “I'll have my coat over it.”

“You mean your raglan?”

“Yes.”

“A tan coat? To Hubert's funeral? Won't do much mournin' in that.”

“It's just at the cemetery. Without his minister there we won't even be going in the church.”

Her shrug is eloquent. I can break with convention if I want to; she can't be held responsible for her daughter-in-law's lack of decorum.

“Myself,” she says loftily, “I'm wearing black. Can't go wrong in black.”

After I finish pressing the dress, I take it back upstairs. Greg is still in bed but awake. Callers had kept him up until well after midnight, so I had been careful not to wake him when I got out of bed to go downstairs.

“Is this dress suitable to wear this afternoon?” I ask as he squints at me sleepy-eyed over the layers of quilts.

He takes a long, sober look.

“Maybe a bit on the bright side,” he allows. “Those flowers. Nothing bashful about them, I'll say that much. Do you have anything else?”

“No. Nothing more suitable.”

“But you'll have a coat on, won't you? Judging by the cold in this room, I'd say it's cold enough outside for a coat.”

Not wanting to discuss Philomena's assessment of the tan raglan, I agree. I look around the walls of his old room for a hook to hang up the dress so it won't get wrinkled again. But there is none. That leaves only the tiny, crowded closet. I go to hang the dress in there, knowing it will be as badly wrinkled as when I took it out of the suitcase, and Philomena will have to contend not only with a gaudy daughter-in-law, but with a gaudy and slovenly daughter-in-law.

I can't even find a spare hanger in the closet, so I rob Peter to pay Paul, taking an overcoat of Hubert's and hanging it over a sweater of Philomena's which had been hanging over a shirt of Hubert's. As I pull and tug on the hangers, Hubert's hunting gun, which he had leaned in the corner of the closet, falls to the floor, missing my slipper-shod toes by inches.

“What in the name of heaven is that doing in here?” I gingerly pick up the gun and stash it back in place. “He hasn't used that thing in years. Why isn't it out in the shed?”

“Because Dad always thought it was safer in there. You never know when someone could break into the shed and steal it. And one of these days I'm going to teach Brendan how to shoot.”

“Over my dead body,” I say, only half joking. I put my weight against the closet door to push it shut. “Anyway, he won't be around long enough for you to teach him how to use it. He's going out to British Columbia. Danny told him this morning he would teach him how to operate a tree harvester if he came out. So now he wants to pack his bag and go to British Columbia.” I laugh. “Don't know which is less life-threatening — gun or tree harvester. Especially if Danny is behind the wheel of the harvester.”

“So Danny's up already?”

“Not only up, he's gone to the store to get sugar for your mother and taken Brendan with him.”

“Well, I'm up, too.” He throws back the mound of quilts and steps out on the floor. He hurriedly looks around for the heavy socks he had taken off the night before, pulls them on, shivering, and then goes to the window and stares down the lane to see if Danny is returning.

“I'm worried about that fellow,” he says. “I wish he'd open up. I get the feeling he's keeping something from me. I get the feeling there's something tormenting him.”

“Perhaps after the funeral,” I say as I reach across the bed to tidy the quilts back in place. “There'll be time to draw him out then.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Greg responds absently, turning away from the window to haul on the jeans he had laid on the bureau last night for lack of closet space. “Right now I've got enough on my mind. I have to get in touch with Paddy to see if everything is lined up with the pallbearers. And if there's been any hitch with the hearse. Paddy says it breaks down a lot. And I have to phone Josie at the office. And I have to...”

He reels off a list of other have-to-do's while he rushes himself into his shirt, shoes and sweater, all yesterday's clothes which will have to be replaced by more sombre funeral attire before the day is over.

The burial is set for two o'clock, and the weather favours me by getting nastier and nastier by the hour. The wind has shifted and has come on strong and blustery, bringing with it a cold, drizzly rain that Philomena says looks raw enough to pierce through oil skins. Perfect weather for a raglan, tan or otherwise.

But it is far from perfect weather for the black summer-weight coat Philomena has set aside to wear. When Bridey drops by to see if we are in need of anything, she tells Philomena she will freeze to death at the cemetery and offers her the loan of a wool full-length black cape she has made herself in a sewing course at the new high school. Another neighbour insists she has just the right cap to go with the cape — one that will stay on in the wind. She goes home and brings back a black tam-o'-shanter.

Because Paddy is a pallbearer and has to ride in the car immediately behind the hearse, Danny offers to drive Bridey to the cemetery in Paddy's car. Her children and Brendan stay at home with a neighbour. Danny and Bridey arrive at the cemetery a few minutes after we do, and when I see Danny coming in through the gate, I hardly recognize him, dressed up as he is in the clothes Greg and Philomena insisted he had to wear. He has on Hubert's navy blue raglan which, Philomena said, was much more suitable than his own leather bomber jacket, and a white shirt and a tie, also Hubert's. Even at a distance I can see that the unbuttoned raglan is hanging lopsided on him, and when he gets nearer I notice his tie is unknotted, simply looped over like a scarf. In the unfamiliar attire he looks as uncomfortable as if his toe is poking out of his sock and he can't wait to get his shoe off to fix it. Even his gait is different, as stiff as a wooden clothespin. But his wit is intact. When he sees his mother standing at the edge of the grave, legs braced against the wind, cape billowing, tam-o'-shanter askew, he sidles up to me and, giving Philomena an under-the-eyebrows look, says in a voice just loud enough for Philomena to hear, “Is that Mom or John Cabot? She looks for all the world like himself standing on the bow of the
Matthew
just before he spied Bonavista.”

Philomena tells him to keep a civil tongue in his mouth. “And stay away from the drop for the rest of this day.”

“God in heaven!” he retorts, stung that she would even entertain such a thought. “Do you think I've got a mickey of screech in my pocket and I'm going to start guzzling it right now? Right in front of my dead father?”

Philomena gives him the once-over and, by way of apology, says, “Yer a sight fer sore eyes, me son. Ye looks some good in that rig. Yer fadder must be smiling — that's if he can recognize you, yer so fancy looking. He might even mistake you for the undertaker.”

When we return from the cemetery, we — Rose and Frank Clarke, Bridey and Paddy, Greg, Philomena, Danny and myself — gather in Philomena's dining room, lately converted into a den. Two winters earlier, Greg had installed a small oil stove in the seldom-used dining room so Philomena and Hubert could watch television in comfort. The room is warm because a neighbour tended the stove while we were at the cemetery.

We bunch up around the stove and discuss the burial, and I confess that when I stood at the edge of Hubert's grave and watched him being lowered into the ground I felt as traitorous as Benedict Arnold. I admit that I had known several days before Hubert's death what the family only found out afterwards: that he couldn't be buried in his birthplace. I had checked the government records, but I didn't let even Greg know this because I didn't want him feeling obliged to tell Hubert that he couldn't have his wish to be buried beside his parents.

Philomena is still wearing the borrowed cap and cape, which she hauls close around her even though she is so near the stove she is practically touching it. She sits in Hubert's chair and lets her index finger idly trace the groove in its wooden arm, a groove worn by Hubert's years of match-striking to light his pipe. After I admit I dodged the truth, Philomena laments that when she mix-married Hubert almost fifty years earlier it had never entered her mind that one day she would be lying high and dry on the cliff-top cemetery on Dickson's Hill while poor Hubert would be down below in the Cove in the Protestant cemetery, drenched to the skin in the salty water that swamps the place every spring.

“If anyone had said to me back then that such a thing would bother me,” she says, “I would have said, ‘Don't be ridiculous! Who cares where yer buried once yer dead?' But then ye gets old and ye finds ye do care.”

In the morning Greg and Brendan gather their belongings together to return to St. John's. Brendan has school and Greg has a court case that can't be delayed. As well, Danny is going back to British Columbia. He has a drive to the Torbay Airport with a friend of his. I am going to stay on for an extra day to help Philomena sort Hubert's clothes.

Before the brothers go their separate ways, Greg tries to get Danny to tell him about the argument he had with his father, the memory of which upset him so much on the night of Hubert's death.

“Beer talk,” Danny again says, “just beer talk. I already told you that.” He diverts the conversation by turning his attention to prying open one of the swollen kitchen windows, saying as he grunts over it that the place smells like the inside of an old suitcase that has been kept in a damp shed. “Should open some windows upstairs, too. In fact, if you ask me, the whole house has death breath.”

Philomena, coming in from the clothesline carrying an armful of still-damp dishtowels, overhears Danny's remarks. “And who asked you, anyway? Besides, if the house has any kind of breath it's cigarette breath from you and Paddy and those cursed American cigarettes you smuggled in from Seattle.” She tosses the dishtowels on the table. “As if the Canadian cigarettes don't stink enough. Maybe you think American cancer is not as bad as Canadian cancer.”

She goes to the window that Danny just opened and pulls it closed. “June or not,” she grumbles, “I have to keep the fire going, and I don't intend to heat up the whole Cove.”

Shortly after noon, as soon as we get the house to ourselves, Philomena and I begin sorting Hubert's clothes. As we sort, Philomena keeps up a steady prattle, as if only the sound of her voice can distance her from what she is doing. When we come to Hubert's shoes, she gets out the polish and brushes and puts a s
hine on each pair. She tells me about a woman in St. John's who didn't want her husband's clothes to be worn by anyone else, so she put all of his right shoes out for garbage pick-up one week and all of his left shoes the following week. Philomena thinks this is a sinful lack of charity. Just because Hubert can't wear his shoes doesn't mean they can't be useful to some other poor devil. And, she tells me, Hubert's death is the worst heartache she has had to endure so far.

“God knows I've had me share,” she says as she tosses an old shirt in the direction of a green plastic garbage bag. “I thought I'd never live through losing little Bridget. And the heartaches with Danny. Leaving home so early, leaving the Church even before that, never really pulling his life together. Restless to the bone. Can't keep track of how many jobs he's had.”

She pauses, not sure whether this is the time to mention the heartache I have caused her. She decides to add it to her list. “And when I found out that Greg was going to marry you, a divorced woman, and he wouldn't be able to receive the full benefits of the Church, well, I was sure that was God's punishment for me because I mix-married Hubert and broke me parents' hearts in the bargain.”

She sighs heavily and tosses a bundle of mated socks into a pile. “I s'pose sorrow is the price we have to pay for living. And death is, too. None of us is spared. No one gets to go up above without first going down below.”

She picks up a glove and absently smoothes out the worn leather fingers, an exact mould of Hubert's hand, even to the crooked little finger. “But God help me, I hopes I'm not around when yer sorrows comes to you, when you learns that the price of living is death. 'Tis easier to bear your own sorrows than to witness someone else's. Especially someone that's close to you.”

I refrain from reminding her that sorrow has already barged through my door on several occasions, that death has become almost commonplace to me. Funerals process through my mind: Uncle Martin's, Grandmother's, Mother's. And Dennis's. Each one carries its own pain. Dennis's is the freshest, the cruellest. The memory of it can still shear me to the bone.