SCENES FROM THE PAST TWO WEEKS

The phone ringing at 10 p.m. on a regular Tuesday night. Philip calling from a work trip to Detroit, weeping. His father, Herman J.W. Hueneke, has passed.

Wednesday night, a family meeting. Luke, Sara, Lydia, Brian, Philip and I picking at pineapple enchiladas. Awkwardly, delicately discussing subjects like cremation versus burial, memorial services, and going through belongings. Groping for what J.W. would have wanted. Lydia’s face in her hands. Brian calling his friend from the funeral home. Philip on his cell, breaking the news to Jimmy, the one who found J.W. and called the ambulance.

Thursday, Philip getting home past midnight after driving around all day with his siblings, meeting with the funeral home, touring rural cemeteries, getting his dad’s keys from the Holbrooks, who had collected the personal effects at the hospital.

Friday morning at the Tractor Supply Co., buying clothes for J.W. — a western shirt, Wrangler jeans, a flashy belt and hat. Then to the funeral home, hours around a shiny wooden table, struggling to plan a memorial service for a man who had lived such an angry, fragmented life. The kind funeral director on the phone, cold-calling country churches; nobody’s home. Tensions mounting between the siblings; Philip walking out. Finally making a decision. Wandering around a showroom of coffins; flipping through a catalog of urns; straining to recall J.W.’s favorite Bible verses.

Friday afternoon, perusing the inventory at Southern Monument. Finding out we can’t choose a gravestone until we’ve selected the cemetery and learned its regulations. Using the bathroom and my period has started. No tears. Being so mad at God I could spit.

Dragging out of bed Saturday morning for the two-hour drive south to Frostproof. A lonely homestead on the side of the highway, two airstream trailers, a barn, a rusty old truck and a dry field. Sorting, sorting. Tools. Oxygen tanks. Canned food. Soiled clothes. Empty bottles. Faded photos. American flags. Spare tires. Fishing poles. Jangling key rings and loose change. Notes scribbled on index cards, unfamiliar names and phone numbers. Envelopes addressed to P.O. boxes. His father’s Bible! There on the dash! Sorting into piles and garbage bags, sun beating down hot. Jimmy hopping the fence, approaching in his cowboy hat and rodeo belt buckle. Facing him for the first time, broken hearts and wet faces. The sun sinking as we search for buried treasure and clues from the past.

The clock ticking 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. while Philip and I sit at the dining room table, me searching for photos, Philip writing his eulogy.

The 10 a.m. private family viewing at the funeral home in Eustis. No rest for the weary. Philip in a black suit, carrying the worn Bible in its stretched black leather case. Just the six of us again, and J.W., a clean-shaven face, resting in satin, the cigarettes that devastated his lungs in his left breast pocket. Hank Williams Jr. on the stereo. Philip on a chair, pain-stricken face, crumpled tissues. Lydia adding photos to the posterboard, images from another lifetime, after Philip and J.W. had slipped into estrangement. Philip wanting time alone with his dad, so the rest of us file out, wordless.

Later, at the small-town Baptist church. Johnny Cash gospel in my ears, dread in my heart. Thirty of us dotting the pews, staring forward at J.W., framed by flowers and memories. Isaiah 40:31. Psalm 23. Philip going forward to speak, face twisting, tears spilling. So much sadness and regret. Luke rising, standing beside Philip, hand on his shoulder. Philip’s words, so honest, so sweet, reaching back, back to childhood delights — a wooden fort his father built; his dad spraying the bushes with the hose to make icicles in the winter. Driving quiet country roads with his dad, driving, driving. Selling watermelons and tomatoes. Fixing a broken axle on the truck, a shirtless man with salt-and-pepper hair and a grinning 10-year-old boy. And in the Bible, a notation — the date Philip accepted Jesus as a six-year-old boy. Tears streaming silently down my cheeks, my heart swelling with so much love and pride for my husband that it might burst.

Lydia, J.W.’s little fisher girl, standing to share. The pastor, preaching, pacing. Who knows a man’s heart? Aunt Marie, J.W.’s sister, sobbing. After, talking with the Holbrooks, who nursed J.W. when his own children couldn’t bear it. The sanctuary clearing, the siblings wanting a moment together with their father, alone. Philip sharing later that they all embraced and wept, closing the casket, staining the wooden lid with their tears.

Philip and I in the car. The longest route home. Passing pastures and forests, old-time country on the radio, Hank Williams Sr. and Waylon Jennings. Back home, collapsing on the bed. Philip’s head in my lap, his body wracked with sobs. So helpless, me, just rocking him, the boy who misses his father so desperately. Death is so final.

Luke and Sara coming over, saving graces. Eating beef brisket and second-guessing the decision to cremate. Leaving urgent messages with the funeral home.

Sleep. Deep, regenerating, long sleep. Then in the car again, driving more country roads, up to the Old Sugar Mill Restaurant at DeLeon Springs. The six of us making our own pancakes out of stone-ground flour and deciding on a full burial.

More days driving the back roads, Philip, Luke and Lydia searching for the right cemetery. Pinpointing hidden graveyards on Google maps, calling seven-digit phone numbers on faded signs. Finally, discovering the Weirsdale Presbyterian Church Cemetery, down a dirt road. Sparsely populated, a hill sloping down to a pond, cranes calling. Horse pastures and woods, tall pines, sturdy oaks and Spanish moss. Excavating survey markers, pressing little orange flags into the earth, marking the spot for the gravediggers.

Another Saturday, another rural drive, the Bible in the back seat, passages underlined in red with a steady hand, words that spoke to Philip’s father once upon a time. Down the dirt road to the cemetery in Weirsdale, warm sun and a brisk January breeze. A green tent, 12 chairs and a simple wooden casket. The six of us again, filling only the first row. Philip reading the Scriptures underlined in red, voice catching. Luke praying, Lydia praying, Philip praying; our little family clutching each other, weeping, thanking God for the beautiful day, the beautiful cemetery, for the closeness we’ve found in these grief-saturated days.

Waiting as the casket is lowered, the clay moved over the grave, pounded down firm. The workers’ truck rumbling away and then quiet, us walking back up to the freshly turned ground, the temporary marker so simple there, bearing his name, flanked by purple flowers and a little American flag.

Later, at the house, chicken barbecuing, fire pit blazing. Philip drinking too much whisky. Country and rockabilly and bluegrass on the radio. “All my rowdy friends have settled down …” “Down in the river to pray …” “Because you’re mine, I walk the line …” “I am a man of constant sorrow …” Brian melting Reese’s peanut-butter cups into marshmallows. Luke sinking into quiet sorrow.

Sunday, another new day. Showering, dressing, pouring a bowl of cereal. Attending the community church with Lydia and Brian. Singing “Be Thou My Vision”: Thou my great Father, I thy true son/Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one. More silent tears. Feeling both forgotten by God and at the same time breathing and upright by His very grace.

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

On New Year’s Eve Day, I joined my friend Ali and her mom, Donna, on a trip to New Smyrna to visit Father John Barry, a 90-year-old Redemptorist Catholic priest. When Ali was little, Father Barry had served as a priest at her church, but her family had lost touch with him after he retired.

For both Ali and me, getting pregnant isn’t coming as easily or quickly as we would like. Thankfully, we have each other for support, and we’re constantly comparing notes, sending each other articles, and laughing and crying our way together through this whole shitty process.

One day in December, Donna suddenly remembered that back in the day, when Ali and her brothers were kids, Father Barry used to bless women who were having trouble getting pregnant, and it seemed to always miraculously work — soon after each blessing, the women would conceive. It became a joke to say, “I’m pregnant because of Father Barry” — something Father Barry would discourage them from saying, albeit with a twinkle in his eye. Father Barry was so confident in God’s power flowing through him that Donna remembered being present once when he was blessing another woman, and Father Barry insisted Donna leave the room, so she didn’t conceive by proxy!

So Donna got to thinking, if she could find out if Father Barry were STILL ALIVE, and track him down, maybe he could bless Ali? When she discussed this idea with Ali, Ali was all about it — and instantly thought of me too. So we talked about all going together. Donna made some phone calls and discovered he was living in a retirement home just an hour away, and he was happy to welcome us. I figured, what could it hurt to spend time with a lonely old guy who had committed his life to the service of the Lord? We set the time and date — the very last day of 2011, a year painfully devoted to unsuccessfully trying to conceive.

The night before, I was nervous. I didn’t know the right way to feel or think about what I was about to do. I flipped open my Bible to the book of 1 Samuel and read about Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah. His other wife was called Peninnah, and she had kids, but Hannah didn’t. One troubling verse in this passage says, “the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb,” and as a result, Hannah’s rival harassed her to the point that Hannah would break down in tears. And this went on “year after year.” It got so bad that Hannah was in “deep anguish” and prayed God, “weeping bitterly.”

I had been wanting to study this story for a long time, as while I wouldn’t say I’m exactly to the point of deep anguish, I’m pretty sad a lot. I also have been wrestling for months with the idea that God opens and closes wombs; it seems kind of cruel and unfair. But Hannah’s situation put mine in perspective some — at least Philip doesn’t have a super-fertile second wife who throws it in my face!

So anyway, Hannah prays desperately to God and makes an extreme vow: “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life.” She then has a brief interaction with the priest at the temple where she’s praying, who says, “May God grant you what you have asked of him.” Hannah feels majorly cheered up. She goes home and gets it on with Elkanah, and the Lord remembers her. She has a son and names him Samuel, which means “heard by God.”

There’s a beautiful prayer by Hannah in chapter 2 (I encourage you to check out the whole story here), and then she does a very hard thing: She gives up Samuel to God, literally leaving him at the temple after he’s weaned from breast-feeding. So Eli says to her, “May the Lord give you children to take the place of the one you prayed for and gave to the Lord,” and Hannah goes on to have three more sons and two daughters.

I prayed Hannah’s prayer a bunch of times that night. I don’t know what it would mean for a modern couple to give a child to the Lord, but I prayed it, and I hoped that someday we’d find out, but that it wouldn’t be as extreme as dropping the kid off at a church for good. And I prayed I’d have the right attitude when visiting with Father Barry — that I would have the faith that God could use him to miraculously help me conceive, but also that I wouldn’t demand that of God, and that I would still love and trust God if it didn’t “work.”

I felt at peace the next morning when I headed over to meet Alison and Donna. The drive went by quickly, and before we knew it, we were sitting around a kitchen table in a common area at the retirement home, waiting for Father Barry to arrive. He approached us slowly, with a cane, tall and thin but frail. We introduced ourselves; Donna tried to jog his memory as to who she and Ali were, but to no avail at first. We searched for topics to discuss — common acquaintances, the pool at the retirement home. Finally we hit on something that made his eyes light up — the golf course at Bay Hill; apparently Father Barry loves to golf.

Then I asked Father Barry to tell us his story. Where was he from? How did he know God was calling him to be a priest? Father Barry spoke slowly and raspily. At times he would pause for long stretches, and we couldn’t tell if he was just searching the remote corners of his brain and would resume talking, or if he had totally lost his train of thought and given up. He was from Boston originally, second to youngest of seven children. His father died in a tragic factory accident when young John Barry was only four, and his mother had told him he was going to be a priest from the earliest he could remember.

Then he began telling a story. When he was little, the neighborhood priest would come to check on the family several times a week, and he would always line up the children and ask them, one by one, what they were going to be when they grew up. My heart started to pound as he shared these details — it was just like what Samuel, the biblical priest and son of Hannah, did with David the shepherd boy and his brothers, to choose the next king of Isreal! The parallel was uncanny!

“I was second to last,” Father Barry said. “The priest would ask me what I was going to be, and I would say, ‘A priest!’ ‘Ah, a priest!’ he would say. ‘That’s good!’ Then he would get to my brother Paul, the youngest. Now, in our neighborhood, there was a black cop who would direct traffic. And when the priest got to my brother Paul and asked, ‘What are you going to be?’ Paul would say, ‘A n****r cop!’” Father Barry smiled mischievously and continued, “That priest would always line us up and ask us that question, just so he could hear Paul say, ‘I’m going to be a n****r cop!’”

Donna, Ali and my jaws all hit the floor. Turns out Father Barry is a funny guy! Yikes! So much for my beautiful biblical parallel. At least his off-color story lightened the mood, and we saw we could joke around with him.

We talked awhile more, Father Barry all the while perking up and remembering more and more. He explained what it meant to be a Redemptorist priest versus a Diocesan priest. In addition to taking a vow of celibacy and obedience, Redemptorist priests also take vows of poverty, living in community and never having their own possessions. He shared how he had wanted to be a foreign missionary, and then a chaplain in the military overseas; he clearly had an itch to travel. But no. His superiors told him God was NOT calling him to those fields, and instead, Father Barry became a professor in Pennsylvania. It was humbling to see a man who had sacrificed so much to follow his calling.

After chatting for a while, Father Barry wanted to show us his room. It was a simple space with a bed, a desk and Catholic artifacts sprinkled around. Several old photographs hung on the wall, one of which, Father Barry told us, was his brother Paul. Donna cocked an eyebrow. “He’s still white,” she deadpanned. “Did he ever become a cop?” We laughed again, and Father Barry said no, Paul was a bus driver, but he had died in his 60s.

Father Barry dug out some more old photos, as well as a newer Christmas-card picture of his great-great nieces and nephews. He showed us some drawings of Jesus that he liked, and then he lifted up a photo of himself as a younger man in his priestly robes. “St. John of the Cross,” he said.

“That’s not St. John of the Cross,” Donna replied gently.

A pause. Then Father John Barry said, “It was a joke.”

After another laugh, Donna approached the subject of the fertility blessing, asking Father Barry if he remembered that he used to bless women who were having trouble getting pregnant. Father Barry thought for a moment, then said yes, he did remember. (Interestingly, she had asked him this same question at an earlier time over the phone, and he said he didn’t remember.) She explained that Ali and I were having trouble, and asked him if he would pray for us. He agreed, and we stood in a circle with his hands on our shoulders. He prayed that God would bless us with the privilege of bearing children, in the name of Jesus and St. Gerard, the patron saint of motherhood. When he said amen and we looked up, tears were streaming down Ali’s face.

From there, Father Barry wanted to show us the home’s chapel, a welcoming room with brown paneled walls and red carpeting. He wandered slowly to a table against a wall and said a figure of St. Gerard used to sit on it, but was no longer there. Then he slowly made his way to a side storage room, which held vestments and other supplies for the services. He began reaching for something on a high shelf, shakily moving bottles and candles out of the way, and we couldn’t work out what he was up to. Finally he asked for help to reach a small statue pushed far back on the shelf. I got on my tiptoes and pulled it down — it was the missing figure of St. Gerard. I handed it to him, and he used it to bless us again, holding it toward us one at a time, crossing us both with it, and touching us each with it on the shoulder.

Our visit was drawing to a close, so we shuffled toward the door. We thanked Father Barry for blessing us and telling us about his life, and he thanked us for visiting. He seemed truly touched that we had come and sorry to see us go. Donna told him we’d come back, and he said, “Please do!” We waved good-bye, all encouraged by the time we’d spent together.

Donna, Ali and I stopped for lunch in New Smyrna, rehashing the experience and debating whether it’s OK for a 90-year-old retired priest to use the n-word. We laughed that we’d both get pregnant with twins since we were blessed twice. And we shared stories from our lives of God working in mysterious and miraculous ways.

I’m so thankful we went. Regardless of if God will choose to work through Father Barry’s blessing or not, it was a lovely afternoon spent with a good friend, her caring mom, and a lonely, kind old man who has no kids or grandkids of his own. And the lesson I tried to take away from all of it — the experience, the story of Hannah — is that God is in control. I’m still having trouble making peace with that truth, but it was one more really good reminder.