Remembering Sarah's Creek — The first cut is the deepest

We were in 10th grade when Bret Godfrey’s parents were killed in the helicopter crash. Bret was one of my closest friends.

I didn’t know his dad well. Bill Godfrey was Lt. Commander of the USS San Francisco being built in the nearby Newport News Shipyard. He was friendly, but the kind of man teenagers called sir.

Virginia Godfrey had a beautiful smile. She made pizza dough for the Friday night parties our friends hosted. We were proud of those homemade pies.

Bret’s parents were cool because they were there for us but stayed out of our way. We were in little need of adult supervision, though we often needed a ride, a little cash, and parental signatures for school field trips.

My memories blur of that Father’s Day weekend when we gathered at the Godfrey house with little more than hot tears and condolences, we barely found the breath to utter. In the long days before the funeral, I asked Bret’s pastor, Chester Brown, how could I help Bret? I ached to be useful.

Chester was standing in Bret’s front yard with other leaders from Hampton Baptist Church. Those disheveled people had practically lived at the Godfrey home during those endless hours.

For a while, these new orphans had no other adults around. He greeted the weary line of Mr. Godfrey’s navy shipmates who came to pay their respects. Many couldn’t speak. They just sobbed, awkwardly stayed awhile, then slumped away. We all looked shipwrecked, not the least of all Chester Brown.

Chester’s presence during those days and his answer to my question was one of many sparks that ignited my call to become a pastor. I admired how he stood in the breach for us. Could I, one day, do the same for others?

He searched my face. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Chester had enough other worries than to waste time on me. He looked like he’d been pulled through a knothole backward. Bone weary. We all looked torpedoed.

“Just be his friend,” Chester said. Not everyone has the presence of mind to say what is obvious. “Just be his friend.”

Neighbors and family descended on the remaining Godfreys. Their love was plain and practical. They brought food, remembrances, helping hands, advice, and a steady, solid presence. They stammered and wept, hugged each other, and walked circles in the front yard when they stepped outside to get some air. They ran errands, communicated with Navy officials, got groceries. They took care of things. Bret’s parents weren’t coming back. Big decisions had to be made in short order.

Sadness and a kind of awesome beauty freighted these days. Sadness and beauty, I would later learn, often go together. Mysterium tremendum. I’ve never since known such total emotional pain.

The first cut is the deepest.

Thirty-seven-years after that stormy summer, Bret, trim and athletic, suffered a widow-maker heart attack. Bad genes, his cardiologist suggested, as he chatted her up in the procedure room while she placed coronary stents. Had he arrived later, she said, he would not have survived.

Later that spring, when he had been given medical permission to travel, a few of us gathered for a small reunion at Chester and Mary Etta Brown’s country house near Yorktown on Sarah’s Creek, near where we grew up. I was eager to be with him, to see in the flesh and blood the friend I had imagined I might have lost.

Chester and Mary Etta fed us seafood at lingering suppers. Their dogs pined for attention, which we gladly lavished. During those days we’d wander out in twos and threes to the pier to soak up some sun or to gaze at stars. We pondered deep things over the shallow waters of that wide creek. We ate, washed dishes, cat napped, caught up, and were mesmerized by tides and breezes. It smelled of marsh and salt. We talked a little about that summer when the Godfreys were killed. Each of us held the brittle edges of our part of that story up to the light.

Past melded with present as happens with friendship over time. And people who were long-gone crowded with us around that table. Ancestors. Old neighbors. Even Bill and Virginia leaned in, reached for the cornbread, spoke with mouths full of food. Their young bodies were no longer broken and lost at sea.

We feasted on shrimp, oysters, Virginia ham, and fresh garden vegetables. I remember snorting laughter and poignant, unrushed silences, sipping a little cold white wine from large, sweating glasses. Bright light flashed off Sarah’s Creek. Summer solstice was warm and pungent with greening, growing things. Clamoring dogs rooted between us, luxuriating in our attention.

Chester regaled us with stories of his ancient relatives being born and dying in the very rooms of that rambling house. Uncle Eddie. Both of his parents. We were surrounded by ghosts. I grew accustomed to the timbre of those voices and the feel of heat from their arms slipping around my shoulders, giving me a friendly squeeze.

We were giddy in this thin space.

Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I could see eternity from the top of Chester’s trimmed lawn that rolled gently towards Sarah’s Creek. At his table, I could hear the rustle of angel wing.

Maybe I was buzzed with wine from those large glasses. I would certainly forgive you for calling these words hyperbole or wishful thinking.

Angel wing. Eternity.

Oh, please, I hear you saying.

I’m sympathetic.

How could we have possibly survived in one piece? Shouldn’t we be shot through with holes, stooped, and limping? How could we laugh like this and look away, eyes full of tears, all in the same moment?

And yet there we were at that dinner table on Chester’s warm porch: older and grayer, something like light pouring through these and life’s million, lesser wounds.