A Place Called Sorry by Donna Milner

Author:Donna Milner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781987915099
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

31.

Our little community was greatly diminished by the death of its storekeeper. The bell above the door rang hollow every time I walked into the grocery store knowing I would never again see Mr. VanderMeer look up and smile at me from behind the counter.

The very afternoon we learned the terrible news, Father took Rose and Alan for one last trip south. At the TB sanatorium outside of Kamloops, they took take care of the business side of death. Dirk VanderMeer’s body was brought home to the place we called Sorry to be buried in the cemetery behind the church.

In the days before and after the funeral, the “closed” sign in the store window didn’t deter the women of the area. They came with offerings of food and sympathy. If Rose VanderMeer was alone, which she seldom was during that first week, she would come down from her grieving in the living quarters upstairs to answer every knock on the door. More often it was Alan or my father who went to the door to receive the casseroles and offers of “anything I can do to help.”

Although we were not family, it felt as if we were, and in those first days Father spent as much time with them as he could. Many of the bolder women approached him as if he were the head of the family and nervously voiced what turned out to be their real concern. Would the store close permanently? Father assured them that as far as he knew, eventually The Sorry Grocers would reopen and continue to operate just as it had in Dirk’s absence. Their questions brought a selfish thought slithering into my mind. I couldn’t imagine life without Alan Baptiste if his mother chose to close or sell the store and leave Sorry. As it was, Alan’s grief took him away from me more than in body. At first I didn’t know how to comfort my friend. The death of his stepfather brought back our own family sorrows, and my initial instinct was to leave Alan to his private grieving. Only the recollection of how he had stood by after my brother’s death and my mother’s disappearance gave me the courage to do the same for him.

The day before Dirk VanderMeer’s funeral, Father was going over the details of the service with Rose and Alan when an unfamiliar Dodge station wagon parked in front of the store. Father went downstairs to find Dirk’s sister, along with her husband and son, at the door. He ushered the family members upstairs, where Mrs. VanderMeer shyly welcomed them to her home. At first they declined her offer to put them up for the night, saying they would drive into Wells and get rooms at the Jack-Of-Clubs Hotel and come back for the funeral service the following day. But after tea, and many tears on Dirk’s sister’s part, they decided to take his wife up on her offer.

At the funeral the following day, I could see Mrs. Gleason’s resemblance to her brother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.