You Are My Sunshine

by Bobbie Jean Huff

Originally published by the New Ohio Review, Volume 25

Let me start by offering my condolences, I said,

holding out my hand.

She shook out her umbrella and placed it open, just

beside the altar.

They thought it was an ulcer, she said. They

gave him some tablets.

Did he have any special requests? I asked.

Favourite hymns? Or something for Communion,

like, maybe, “Water Music?”

He was worse by Christmas, she said. He couldn’t

manage the pumpkin pie. He always loved

my pumpkin pie.

“The King of Love” is nice, I said. I opened the book

To page 64.

As an alternate to “Crimond,” you know. Most people

don’t recognize it as the 23rd Psalm.

In January his feet turned black, she said.

Toe by toe.

It took exactly ten days.

The shadow of a branch moved slowly back

and forth behind the stained glass. I thought:

When I get home I’ll check my toes.

Will there be Communion? I asked, finally.

The last three days he started to hiccup, she said.

He wouldn’t take any water. It never stopped, the

hiccupping. Not once, not one minute until he went.

I could play “Pachelbel Canon.” That’s very

popular now. There’s no reason it can’t work at

funerals as well as weddings.

At the very end, she said—then stopped, her

eyes squeezed shut behind her glasses—as if

the rejected water, each wretched hiccup and

every blackened toe formed

a chain she could use to haul herself back to

September, when she would claim him, finally whole again.

She reached for her umbrella and frowned. Play

what you like, she said. He was never fond of music.

Not hymns, anyway. Only once in

fifty-three years did I catch him singing.

“You Are My Sunshine,” I believe it was.