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.