part0014

O ne of the many privileges of homeschooling is the ability to sleep in. In our small community, Becky and I were unique that we were the only kids on our long road that didn’t actually have farming responsibilities. Everyone else woke up before the sun rose and would milk cows, collect eggs, or feed the hogs. By the time she would make it to the bus stop, with sleep in her eyes, the other kids had already been up quite a few hours taking care of their chores. Because my entire education took place at home, and my mom enjoyed the quietness of the house before my father would rise, I was never forced out of bed before 7:00 a.m. Becky’s bus arrived at 6:13 a.m. Some mornings, I would wake up early; my father would be passed out from a long night of “studying” with his leather-bound books and bourbon. Mom would be sitting in the kitchen, enjoying the quiet. I would sneak out the window and walk Becky to the bus stop, which was almost a mile and a half down the road from her house.

The bus stop met at an intersection of the two farming roads. Instead of having to go up and down one and then turn all the way around and then back up and down the other, the school board decided it was best to pick everyone up at one central location. That meant that if it was raining or scalding hot, all the farming kids had to walk to the intersection. It also meant that they had to be picked up extra early. The high school didn’t start until 8:45 a.m., but the farming kids were picked up first and then driven through the suburbs to pick up everyone else. No exceptions were made. Not even on snowy days, like this one.

Snowy days were rare in Alabama, but they did happen. Most of the time, the school would panic and not want the buses out on the road. But this year, we had already had a hurricane that caused school to be out for almost a month. If we missed any more school, they would have to extend the school year to make up for lost days. Instead of risking having to postpone their vacations, the school board and principals decided to risk life and limb of the school children and open the school anyway .

This was the same week that Becky decided she was to be called Rebecca now. She was tired of being viewed as a kid. I think she was also beginning to be tired of me viewing her as only my best friend and not something a little bit more … official. But I was quite a long ways away from figuring that little detail out. That morning, I woke up extra early because I knew that I had made her mad when I mocked her for saying she wanted to be addressed as Rebecca instead of Becky. I was pretty mean and said something along the lines of, “Little Becky wants to be a big deal doctor! Paging Doctor Becky, I mean Bossy Pants Rebecca!”

This wasn’t the first time I had made her mad in our life growing up together. I was actually a professional at it. So I did my usual routine and snuck out the window. As soon as I hit the lightly dusted ground, I regretted not getting a real jacket. There wasn’t time to risk making my way back up the trellis, into my room, find a jacket, get back down, and then make it to the end of Rebecca’s road in time to meet her before she started her trek to the bus stop. I guess I’m going to freeze, I thought to myself and made my way onward to try to make things right.

When I made it to the end of her road, she was almost to the bottom herself. She had her arms crossed and her face looked stern. Her cheeks were red. At first, I thought it was from the cold before I realized that her eyes looked a lot different too. She had on makeup. It was the first time I agreed that she kind of looked like a woman and not a girl. Then I realized I didn’t think it was the makeup that made the difference at all. She looked mad, really mad at me, with the fire that only a woman who has truly been hurt by a man can possess.

“You are a horse’s ass, Patrick Thackery,” she said, spitting the words through her teeth.

“Listen, I’m sorry.” I tried to explain further, but she just walked right on past me and onto the main road.

“You are just like your father!” Those words cut quick.

“I am not,” I protested, but I said the words with such anger and frustration that I did, in fact, kind of sound like my father.

“Go way, Bryant Thackery the THIRD!”

She said third like it was a curse word. It jumped off her lips like they were a cliff and thudded right in front of me as if those letters were a boulder. I tripped on them and she escaped.

“Rebecca!” I yelled for her and began to make a sad excuse for a chase. She cut through the woods and not down the road, flipping me the bird. That was it. I was going to leave her be.

I stayed in my room most of the day, watching the sun make a very bad attempt at melting the snow. It softened the top of the powdery white from the night before, but as the sun began to make its way behind the trees, it froze again as a thick ice. This is when it was especially dangerous. It was just after 3:30 p.m. and the school had let out. But just like the farm kids were the first to be picked up so the suburb kids didn’t wait long for the bus, they were also the last to be dropped off, typically after the sun set during winter months. I waited by the window because on her way back, Rebecca had to walk right past my house to get home. It had been long after the time she normally arrived. Even if we didn’t get a chance to hang out, she would at least wave at my window, right?

Squinting, I looked down the road, the sun was almost completely set but I could see a thick patch of red hair making its way up the road. There was another kid, a chubby guy with freckles, who also walked by my house on the way home. I never knew his name. His parents didn’t like my parents for some reason. But he was almost always lugging behind Rebecca by a whole fifteen minutes at least. I grabbed a jacket and pulled my boots on and ran outside. I was having trouble catching my breath by the time I reached him. I don’t know why I ran so damn fast, it wasn’t like he was working hard to get home. It seemed the cold weather was making him slower than usual.

“Hey!” I said to the freckled kid and he looked at me with a jolt.

“Where’s Rebecca?”

“Who?” he asked, looking genuinely stupid. Then I realized that word probably hadn’t made its way around the school yet that Becky was now Rebecca. So I tried again.

“Becky Hughes. Where is she?”

“I don’t know; she didn’t get on the bus this morning. I haven’t seen her.” And with that he toddled off.

My brain went into overdrive. Where was she? Was she pulling some prank on me to teach me some lesson? Maybe she had paid the freckled redhead kid to try to throw me off the scent. That didn’t sound like Becky. Rebecca. No, it didn’t at all. It sounded like the type of “horse’s ass” thing I would do, not her. Without telling my parents I ran up the road toward where she had split from me. Because no new snow had fallen and due to the way the snow had melted and then froze again so quickly, her shoe prints formed a perfect little inverted path to where she must be. I darted down to the woods as fast as I could but also as cautiously as possible so as not to disturb the footprints along the ground. My heart was pounding in my chest with fear.

After almost half an hour into the woods, I started to wish I had brought a flashlight. Growing up in a world before everyone had a cellphone was truly amazing in so many ways. But moments like this, not being able to just open my phone and have an instant flashlight, I guess I didn’t know the difference. I was just scared. Worst of all, the weather was getting worse and worse as the minutes went by. I could smell that it was going to snow again. That unique smell of snow was in the air. There was an unmistakable scent of the air thinning and I knew what this meant, time was becoming even more precious! If it snowed, I would lose her footprints in a matter of minutes. Worse, it was becoming much harder to see the ground and follow the footprints in the ice as it was. The moon was not out and everything seemed darker than it should. It was becoming harder to keep my eyes open in the blistering cold that was hitting my face with the wind that was picking up with some intensity as the storm moved closer. I knew I needed to find her soon.

I finally made my way down to the creek and her prints were lost against the stones and dirt that lined the creek bed. Her path seemed to go to the right and that also made the most logical sense if she was going to still try and make her way down to where the bus stop was. I made my way down the creek. The noise of it was eerie in the darkness and cold. It was not cold enough to freeze the running water. The rush of it was so profound and deafening. I could hardly hear my own thoughts over it. Just ahead, I could see a brightly colored shoe from behind a tree. My heart sank.

“Rebecca!” I shouted, piercing through the darkness. No noise came back. I started to run toward where the shoe was, almost half a mile up the creek. My mind started to play with me the closer I got. What if it wasn’t her? What if it wasn’t a shoe at all? What if I was just projecting my hope? The closer I got, the harder it was to see in the dark. My eyes were having a hard time adjusting. I could see little specks as I tried to focus. The worst thought imaginable went rushing through my brain. What if I am too late? What if this morning, in the middle of our fight, was the last time I’ll ever see her? I shouted her name as loud as I could!

“Patrick!” she called back. Her voice was weak and raspy. She had a hard time getting the word out, like she had been yelling for hours and finally lost all the strength to continue. I picked up my pace, running as fast as I could. She was alive. That was all that mattered in the whole world.

I knelt down into the ice and snow and my knee hit a rock. It hurt something fierce against my cold skin and bones. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered now except that she was alright. She wrapped her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go. I looked down at her as soon as she released her grasp on me. It was clear she had twisted her ankle tripping on an ice patch as she walked away from the creek with the intent to cut back through to where the road was.

“You came back for me. I knew you would find me. I just knew you would! What took you so long?”

I reached out and took her hand, it was cold as ice. She was cold, but she was alive.

Now, as I stood in a metallic room waiting for the coroner to arrive, it felt like it was surrounding me and suffocating me. I could almost taste the metal. Everything was sterile and impersonal. No hope existed in my heart. Somewhere, inside one of these coolers, was the woman I loved. Because of all the chaos, I never got to touch her after the ambulance arrived. I wished I had. Just then, the coroner walked in unceremoniously and spoke a few words toward me that I couldn’t hear but I somehow instinctively knew how to follow his commands. He opened a door and slid her out in front of me. There she was. The coroner walked to the back of the room to grab a clipboard.

Without thinking, my hand reached out and held hers. It was as cold as that day I found her in the woods. But this time I couldn’t pick her up and carry her home. That day, I picked her up and carried her the whole way. I didn’t complain when my legs started to hurt. I didn’t make a fuss about my arms getting tired. I just held her as tight as I could, promising in my heart I would never let her go. But now I couldn’t sit with her by the fire and wait for her to warm up. There would be no hot cocoa and retelling the story to each other like it wasn’t actually scary. The worst fear I had that day in the woods had now come true some twenty years later; here lay my beautiful best friend, frozen and dead. Gone forever.

I signed some paperwork and walked away. The funeral would be in a few days, which meant I was about to have to get back into pastoral mode. Part of me relished the idea. I was reading and escaping into my work, into writing a eulogy, into being stuck with my books and thinking about how to theologically make sense of all this chaos. Anything other than having to be in the part of my head that was painfully and bitterly aware that she was dead. This would make it all work, just another notch in the weeks-long list of responsibilities. Be strong for the people, I told myself. There was just one Goliath-sized problem. I had already failed in that capacity and the entire world saw my failure happen on repeat in memes and gifs and played once an hour across every news station. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

It was Monday morning and even though it had actually been less than twenty-four hours, it seemed like an eternity had passed since the previous afternoon. I had received a text from the church secretary that the elders were still meeting that night and that I was expected to attend. I wasn’t even going to get a moment to process this, was I? It was probably for the best. After I walked out of that room with her, my body and mind went into shock. I was completely fine. Nothing bothered me. My task was simple. I just needed to make arrangements to bury the only person I had ever truly loved and expect my girls to graciously accept the reality that their mother was dead forever while their dad’s meltdown circulated on repeat across every social media platform, late-night talk show, and the morning news. What could be the matter with that? It was going to be easy. I had it all completely under control. It was fine. Everything was fine.

When I arrived at the elders’ meeting, I walked in with a blissful arrogant ignorance. Somehow, I felt like everyone was just going to give me a pass for losing my absolute mind at Dennis and publicly denouncing God. Of course, they would obviously understand that a person has moments of weakness. Sure, I had cursed God and denounced the working power of the Holy Spirit on a national platform, metaphorically. This was all going to work itself out.

I made the walk up the staircase to the conference room. I could hear some of the elders already shouting and it seemed that they were very mad about something. I’m sure they were furious at the way the world had decided to treat me in the middle of all of this. They were ready to great me with compassion and grace. I needed that just at that moment, somewhere deep inside me, beyond my shock. I needed someone just to give me a hug and say, “Son, it’s going to be alright. ”

The moment I opened the door and walked into the room there was a dense silence. Almost ritualistically, the elders stopped and made jagged Pac-Man like movements to their seats and sat down without a word. No hug. No condolences.

Elder Samuel called the meeting to order without any fanfare. I was suddenly hit with a rush of reality. I think I might be in trouble, I thought to myself. I too took a seat at the end of the long assembly table. Elders lined each side, but their bodies were turned away from me and instead just slightly tilted in the direction of the other end of the table, almost pointing my view toward the visible distaste that smeared across Elder Samuel’s face.

“I will make this brief,” he said, breaking the silence. “This should not be a matter of debate or discussion. You should be immediately and indefinitely removed from your pastoral responsibilities. And—”

Elder Frank cut in, breaking his gaze from Elder Samuel and looking down toward me. “And your last time behind the pulpit will be to say words for your wife, should you choose to do it.”

My head cocked a little to the left and my eyes batted instinctually like that meme of the confused blond guy. I nodded in agreement. The next thing I knew paperwork was being put in front of me. I was signing things. It was all a blur. I wasn’t even really sure what I was agreeing to. Some of the elders looked ashamed, others looked satisfied. I wouldn’t accuse them of this being what they always wanted, but it sort of looked like it in this moment.

The only person who looked truly uneasy was Elder Eli. He had traveled with my grandfather. He was the oldest of the elders, and after everything was done he finally spoke up with shame in his voice for not saying anything sooner.

“This is only for now, while we figure things out. God is good.”

And almost liturgically, each of the elders said together, “All of the time.”

But God did not feel good to me all of the time. He didn’t feel good to me as I made the long walk across the field, past the place where Dennis had stopped me and accepted my challenge. God didn’t feel good as I walked up the stairs to the room where I would now lie alone. The Lord did not feel good as I could hear my daughters crying through the floor underneath me that I was lying on, unable to make it all the way to our bed. My bed. Then I heard the faint words of my mom consoling them. Why wasn’t I? Who was going to console me? No, God didn’t feel good to me in any of those moments. He felt distant and gone and nowhere to be seen. All three Persons of the Trinity were as far from me as I could possibly imagine. There was no Father willing to give up everything to heal us, there was no Son eagerly cheering us on, and there was no chaotic Holy Spirit waiting to teach me the way to go. It felt as if, in that moment, God was gone, and worst of all His Church had abandoned me in my hour of need. All the hours we had given, even our last days together, and I was discarded for simply being human. For being angry. For being sad. For being less than perfect.

It was only temporary. It was going to be fine.

By Wednesday, I was standing behind the pulpit once again and for what could be the last time for a very long time. The media were forced to stay outside. They did not broadcast what I said on our website or social media. Only baptized church members were allowed in. I do not remember what I said, but I know it wasn’t enough. I know that I didn’t do her justice. My girls did not get what they needed from their dad. I had forgotten to mention her laugh and the way her eyes smiled. Why hadn’t I mentioned the way she would brush our daughters’ hair back just before wiping away a tear from a skinned knee? I should have mentioned that she was my whole world. My everything. About how she would lie there after we made love and watch me as I fell asleep, memorizing those moments. Cherishing them in her heart. I forgot to say that she loved my girls more than life itself. Why had I forgotten to represent her well?

After everything was over, I stood and greeted people. My three girls were standing next to me and their mother in a coffin. I shook hands and smiled, mimicking my father. That was the best I could give that day. I thanked people for coming. I told them that I would call if I needed anything. I told them that their casseroles, rotting on our countertops, were delicious. Once they all got a moment to say something, once I had said more than I could, we took her body away to be buried. Only the elders, my girls and my mother made our way to the graveside. She was buried next to my father and grandfather with a space between them left for me. I wanted to go ahead and crawl into the ground with her.

“One day,” I said toward the lifeless ground .

I made my way back across the field, back into the home my grandfather built, retreating into the hallowed halls of the empire my father hoped to see, and I hid inside that study with my pills. I shut out the whole world and I wished for death to visit me. I was ready to die.