The Sun Will Rise

I. Bullet Train

Declan jolted back to reality as he realized he had been staring at the screen two rows down for the last several minutes. He looked around at the seats in his immediate vicinity. He was lucky he got an aisle seat considering the last minute nature of his booking. 

Everyone was sleeping now that the crew had finally dimmed the lights and stopped making unnecessary announcements. Whose benefit were these announcements for anyway. It’s not like there was going to be anyone who happened to be taking their first flight ever and didn’t already know all of the relevant safety information. He knew one person on the plane was taking their last flight.

He looked back to the screen two rows down. It was some action movie that took place on a train and looked vaguely Japanese, but Brad Pitt was in it along with some other faces he recognized.

He turned on his screen in front of him and the brightness hit him like a set of oncoming headlights that the clumsy driver forgot to dim while coming around the corner. He adjusted the brightness to something closer to his current mood and went immediately to the blockbusters section to figure out what the ridiculous movie he had been shoulder watching was.

Bullet Train.

A movie as ridiculous as the name suggested and yet, even still he was getting drawn to what was happening on the other person’s screen. At least someone was paying attention to it. The guy in the seat was sleeping, his head lolled to the side and a barely audible snore could be heard with each intake of breath just above the noise from inside the cabin.

Declan toyed briefly with the idea of watching Bullet Train from the beginning but he wasn’t sure what his mother would think. Rather, he wasn’t sure if it displayed the level of decorum befitting the current situation. His mother most certainly wouldn’t care whether he did watch Bullet Train or not. She was in a box somewhere beneath him and she was most assuredly not snoring.

He hadn’t seen them load the coffin but the older couple inside him had remarked heavily on it while watching out the window.

“Oh, look Rick, look! They’re loading a casket on the plane. That’s so creepy. That’s so sad. Do you think there’s a dead person in it? I wonder what happened.”

Rick shifted uncomfortably in his seat and Declan took his cue from him. He had no intention of announcing himself to this couple but he equally could not sit stock still as he knew they were loading his mother’s dead, lifeless corpse onto the plane at this very moment.

“You might consider shutting your pie hole, Darlene. The family could be on the plane and they could hear you and take exception.”

“I’m sorry, I just ain’t never seen this kind of thing before. I didn’t even know they put bodies on planes.”

“How the hell else do you think they move ‘em around?”

“I guess I didn’t think they move ‘em around at all. Why on earth would anybody want to move a dead body like that?”

II. Your First Time?

“Where are you folks from?” Declan’s excusatory throat clearing could not have been any more transparent. “You guys sound like you’re not from around here?”

“We’re coming from God’s country and we’re looking to spend the week drinking the nectar of the gods in your lovely Emerald Isle.”

Declan was impressed that he had already picked up his accent. Even after 22 years in Boston, he hadn’t lost it. Of course, there was a wide variety of opinions on his accent any time he went back to Ireland, trips that had been less and less frequent in recent years. They varied from “Jaysus, you haven’t lost it at all,” to “Oh, you’re very American altogether now, a right Yank.” 

“Oh Declan, there’s that twang again,” his mother would say every day when he came in from work. She claimed that if they talked enough over dinner, he would completely lose it and morph back into his teenage self again by the time they filled the dishwasher.

When his father had died just 4 years into Declan’s time in America, he moved back home for a few months. His father had been his whole world, the reason he had become the man that he had – and the reason he needed to leave Tipperary. He wasn’t made for the same life as his father, which became crushingly obvious by him failing out of college and not reaching his potential on the rugby field – both equally crushing blows for his father.  

It was bad enough that his father had been school principal all through Declan’s secondary school years, but when he took over management of the rugby team while Declan was in college, that was enough. 

Admittedly, he didn’t need to go 3,000 miles to get away. That was maybe a little bit excessive but now, 22 years later, it had clearly been the right decision. 

“You both like whiskey?” Declan asked, not necessarily wishing to continue the conversation but knowing he needed to say enough for the coffin loading to be forgotten.

“He loves whiskey and I like him more when he’s drinking whiskey,” she snorted, “Far more amenable, that’s for true.”

“I said it before and I’ll say it again, Darlene. Shut your pie hole.”

Declan went back to minding his own business, unsure if this was just their shtick or if they actually hated each other. He suspected they were the type who married young and stuck it out through brute stubbornness.

Bullet Train looked to be reaching its climax now. 

Rick and Darlene had bickered on and off during dinner but both were resting noiselessly now and Declan was thankful for this. He got up to use the bathroom after the dinner service even though he didn’t need to. Thankfully for him, they took the hint and used the chance presented to them. Hopefully no one would need to stir for the rest of the flight. 

Declan hated these overnight flights to Shannon. He couldn’t prove it but he swore they got shorter and shorter every year, to the point that there is no time to actually sleep. They also seemed to be getting earlier. This flight was likely going to land in Shannon at midnight Boston time which was 5am in Ireland. What was someone going to do in Ireland at 5am? Why not leave at midnight when everyone is good and tired and get in mid-morning instead?

Declan had enough trouble running his own landscaping business, he didn’t need the headache of running an airline too so decided to not make his opinions known to the flight crew on this particular occasion.

He pushed the call button and forced a smile when asking the heavily manicured flight attendant for a double whiskey. She returned with it quickly and as Declan sat there, swirling it gently in the little plastic cup, the words of his father rang in his ears. 

“There won’t be a drop drank while that woman is still in this house.”

He had said this when his own mother, Declan’s granny, had died, and while he didn’t fully understand the sentiment and they weren’t in a house, he tussled with the thought.

He needed his wits about him when he arrived in Shannon to meet the undertaker, but he also needed to sleep. If watching Bullet Train didn’t feel right, was drinking a double whiskey more or less decorous? 

He was glad Sharon had decided to stay behind for an extra day with the kids. This was a pilgrimage he needed to take by himself.

“You goin’ back home to visit family? Maybe a wedding? I heard Irish weddings are a blast?” 

Declan hadn’t noticed Rick wake up beside him. 

“Something like that,” he responded, without thinking how cloaked that must sound. “This your first time to Ireland?”

“No sir, I been three times now. This is my first time with Darlene but she’s been before too.”

Declan had follow up questions but wasn’t sure yet what was appropriate to ask. He went back to swirling his whiskey.

“I just love it over there. I’d have gone a lot more if I could but then my wife got sick and she couldn’t travel no more.”

“Darlene was sick?” Declan asked. “Is she better now? Is this a celebratory trip?”

“Darlene, my ass. My wife died a couple years back. Darlene is just my girlfriend.” He looked cautiously to his right. “I hope she’s asleep and didn’t hear that. She says we’re partners but that feels like too much commitment to me at our age.”

There was silence for a second as Declan pondered this.

“I’d say there’s not much to commit to but,” Darlene was in fact awake and gave a subtle nod to Rick’s heaving gut which protruded impressively. “Ya fat bastard,” she added, removing all subtlety from the equation.

Rick tried to suck in his gut a little, seemingly stung by the pot shot from Darlene, but it only caused his belly to become more pronounced. 

III. The Fucking Famine

Declan had just about enough of this fucking couple. Under other circumstances, they might have been entertaining but he couldn’t stomach them tonight. 

These feelings coupled with the cabin pressure immediately overwhelmed his tear ducts. He fought the urge to start ugly crying and closed his eyes in an effort to fight back the tears. He knew he wouldn’t sleep but that it was badly needed. 

He had sat with his mother the entire previous night. Some neighbors had been in and out during the evening and were, to a person, absolutely mystified by the dead body that was on display in the center of the living room. Declan had to assure them that this was standard practice in Ireland and what his mother would have wanted had she died at home. 

She had wanted to die at home. 

She told Declan that any time she could but, by the time she was actually dying, it was too late to make that happen. Home did not mean Declan’s home. She meant her home and she wanted to be waked in her own home and she wanted to be buried in a coffin beside her husband. Declan was determined to make two of those three things happen.

“Darlene here is 100% Irish on her mother’s side. She’s all shillelaghs and lepre-shauns as far back as that side goes.”

“Oh yeah?”
“One. Hundred. Percent! I’m an O’Sullivan from cow-knee Quirke.”
“Cork? You mean Cork?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“Um… sure.” Declan conceded, wearing the pressure of the last few days around his eyes. 
“My people left Quirke… Quorke,” Darlene gave Declan an accomplished nod before continuing, “during the Mighty Famine in 1792. I think it was my grandfather but I never met the man.”
“Actually, your people might not have been from Cork. The boat left from…” Declan realized just how much fact checking there would be to follow and let his sentence trail off to be sucked up by the incessant hum of the massive engines outside the window.

“Are you ever going to drink that or are you wanting to buy it dinner first?” Rick was positively delighted with his joke. Declan shot him a polite smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Who is it you got in the casket below?”
“Jesus Christ, Darlene, I told you not to say nothin’.”
Declan looked from Darlene to Rick, his face screwed up like a pig licking piss off a nettle. 
“It’s got to be a parent, right? Is it your mom?”
“That’s really none of your business,” Declan retorted, a look of violent recrimination painted across his ever darkening features. “You fat Yankee fucks,” he added for good measure. 

Rick immediately straightened his body and sat stock still, his right hand placed firmly on Darlene’s thigh and his sizable gut serving as a barrier between Darlene and Declan. Darlene, for her part, had the grace to blush and looked down timidly at her knees.

Declan lifted the cup of whiskey and threw it down his throat before pressing a button above his head. A blinding spotlight hit him square in the face. He cursed loudly, pressing it again to plunge his seat back into darkness, and pressed the button next to it causing a bell to ring. Seconds later, a flight attendant appeared from the galley behind him.

“Yes sir, how can I help you?”
“I need to be moved to another seat.”
“I’m afraid there are no seats, sir. As we said before take off, this is a full flight.”
“What about business class? How much is business class?”
“Like I said, sir, we’re operating a full flight. Is there something the matter?”
“Is something the matter? No, no, nothing’s the matter. Only I haven’t slept in 3 days, my mother is dead in a box somewhere beneath me, and these fucking Americans won’t stop talking to me about leprechauns and whiskey and the fucking famine!”
“Sir, I do sympathize with your situation but I am going to have to ask you to keep your voice down.”
“Look ma’am, we’re real sorry, we didn’t mean to upset the poor guy. We promise we won’t say a word for the rest of the flight. Isn’t that right, Darlene?”

Darlene gave a sheepish nod in Rick’s direction before turning to the flight attendant and giving a far more assertive double nod. Declan looked directly ahead, his teeth grinding noisily behind pursed lips. He closed his eyes as the flight attendant turned off his call light and returned to the galley, leaving the occupants of row 27 to wallow in a rather uncomfortable silence that somehow cut above the noise of the engines rumbling beneath the wings.  

IV. That Bleedin’ Counthry

Declan was breathing deeply and loudly now, each breath working through a modicum of the grief he was feeling in that moment. There was not enough air in the sky to rid him of this overwhelming sense of despair that was crashing over him like a tsunami. 

He felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes to see Darlene reaching across Rick’s comically large gut with a fistful of tissues. He accepted them with an ashen face and Darlene withdrew again to her window. Declan closed his eyes but not before tears released themselves from his eyes and ran with reckless abandon down his blotchy cheeks. 

He dabbed at his eyes while Rick was busy stabbing at his screen in front of him, trying to adjust the volume. Declan slowly extended his index finger, pushing Rick’ earphones all the way in, causing him to jump as the unmistakable 21st Century Fox trumpets blared at top volume directly into his ear canals. 

“You guys have a totally fucking ridiculous accent,” Declan laughed now and snot bubbled out of his nose. “I mean it is over-the-top ludacris, even by American standards.”

Darlene and Rick both curled their mouths into a smile, but their eyes betrayed the pity they were feeling for Declan.

“My mother, she grew up in Dublin. North inner city. Real shitty part of town. The accent there is that of a working class poet with an ever-erect middle finger and roguish smile. My mother had that accent before she met my dad and moved to Tipperary.” Declan smiled now, as a fresh stream of tears began to run unbidden but uninterrupted down his face. 

“Tipperary got into her bones and it changed her. It changed her accent. The Tipp accent has an almost musical lilt to it, melding the west coast with the midlands accent for something totally unique. I’ve always hid my accent – I’m probably doing it now, but I never could when I was with her.”

Declan took a beat to give this rotund couple of strangers a chance to respond but they stayed true to the promise they had made minutes ago to the soft featured flight attendant. 

“You asked before take off why anyone would want to move a dead body like this, Darlene. It was my mothers wish to be buried in Ireland. She had lots of wishes. One was that there’d be no fucking offatory procession at her funeral.” 

“No sad of turf symbolizing my love of hard work and the earth. I loved turf because I loved not freezin’ me bollocks off in the evenings while I was watching me soaps. That was her reasoning.” Declan smiled at the memory.

“That bleedin’ country, she’d say, that bleedin’ counthry’ll break your heart every time. I once told her there was a kind of grotesque beauty to her accent. She swore up and down that my father called her a grotesque beauty but she always said it with a spark of divilment in her eyes.”

“One thing I could never understand is how she never picked up the Boston accent. She lived there as long as she lived in Dublin.”

The familiar bell sounded and the pilot’s voice announced that they would be landing in Shannon in just under half an hour. There was a flurry of activity as the flight attendants rushed through the cabin to prepare for landing. The first signs of the darkness lifting were now visible on the horizon. Soon they would hit the west coast and not too long after Declan would be among his family, among the rolling green pastures of Tipperary, ready to share the grief of his mother’s passing with those she loved best.

V. Come to the Pub After

Declan embraced the silence as the flight attendants took their seats for the final time. The sun was up enough to be bathing his side of the plane in light. The words of what was almost certain to be the song playing as his mother took her final journey came rushing to the front of his mind.

“Dry all your tears, 
Come what may,
And in the end the sun will rise on one more day.”

The wheels of the plane hit the ground with a thud and they started to decelerate powerfully. Declan allowed a couple more stray tears to escape before wiping his face and blowing his nose into the tissue that Darlene had proffered. 

“Hey listen man, we’re real sorry. We didn’t mean to upset you like that.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I should never have called you fat Yankee fucks.”

“Water under the bridge, and besides,” Rick gave a curt nod towards his protuberant belly. 

All three laughed.

“If it’s not too ridiculous a thing, and if you’re okay with it, we’d love to come to the funeral. Is that a terrible imposition?”

Declan’s face began to screw up slowly, like watching someone swallowing a wasp in slow motion. 

“We’d just love to celebrate your mom’s life and hear the eulogy. She sounds like a great lady.”

“That was another one of her wishes,” Declan smiled, as his eyes welled with tears “no fuckin’ eulogy! If you come to the pub after, you’ll hear the real stories about her, though. Rick will surely get his fill of whiskey, too. ”

Declan smiled again at no one in particular.

“The only thing that’s more fun than an Irish wedding is an Irish funeral.”