She Didn't Have the Time | Passages from The Excursion

Father Tom on Mary Higgins, grief, work, and the schedule that answered a philosophical question.

"She didn't grieve. She didn't have the time. She worked the morning shift at the dry cleaners, the lunch shift at the diner, and the night shift scrubbing floors at the elementary school."

Father Tom · Peter James Stouffer

Elias had asked how a woman feeds six mouths on grief.

Father Tom answers without ornament: she did not grieve because she did not have the time. The answer is not a doctrine or a theory. It is a schedule.

Three shifts. Dry cleaners, diner, elementary school floors. Father Tom is not marveling at endurance from a distance. He is testifying to what Mary Higgins had to become in order to keep the children fed.