Fit Month for Dying by M.T. Dohaney Page A

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.
    â€œGod 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.
    Around two o’clock we come to the end of the sorting, and then we put the bags, stuffed to the hilt, in my car and take them to people who, according to Philomena, can make good use of Hubert’s things. When we return, Philomena goes upstairs to take her afternoon nap and I sit in the den and think about Hubert. Even though his belongings have been removed from every room in the house, the essence of him remains: the groove in the arm of the chair, the smell of his pipe, the sound of his cough. I recall how good he had always been to me, how he had taken my side in any brush with Philomena, especially when she would get a choke-hold on some notion, like searching for my biological father, and refuse to let go of it no matter how much I tried to make her see reason.
    After about half an hour of this recalling and remembering, retracing the years, the everlasting absence of Hubert becomes so crushing I have to get away from the house. A walk is what I need, and I leave immediately, stopping in the porch long enough to put on a heavy jacket. Even if it is mid-June, the wind is still winter cold and the fog is pea-soup thick. I close the back door quietly behind me so as not to wake Philomena.
    I saunter through the Cove, something I rarely have time to do. When I rush out for a weekend, I usually have to go see this one or that one about some problem they want solved. Through gaps in the fog, I see how ragged the village has become. With the fishing long gone and the American base all but withdrawn, the young people have moved away to find work. I pass abandoned houses, steps sagging, front yards gone wild, the palings enclosing the yards gap-toothed. Where there used to be windows, there are now shabby boards or in some cases just gaping holes. The once-upon-a-time painted clapboards have been licked to the bone by the