A Captain's Duty

injured.”
    “I’m fine,” I called out.
    The launch zoomed toward the Bainbridge . I saw the big ship coming closer and closer and I thought, My God, it’s over. I made it. I’m out of there. I’m alive.
     
    Andrea was sleeping early Sunday morning when she thought she heard my voice, saying, “Ange, I’m okay. Don’t worry, I’m okay.” She woke up, went into the bathroom, and then got back into bed.
    “Andrea,” said Amber from the other side of the bed. “I just had an epiphany.”
    “What is it?”
    “I really think Rich is going to be all right.”
    “Do you really think that? Because I was feeling the same thing.”
    She said she knew then that something was going to happen. It was Easter Sunday. Good or bad, Andrea felt that things were coming to a head.
    Amber fell back to sleep, but Andrea couldn’t. She kept thinking, Enough talking. I have to do something. Rich has got to be tired and hot by now. How much longer can he hold on? She wanted to send me some positive energy. But she was 7,500 miles away from her husband—what could she do?
    Then it came to her. When the bishop of Vermont had called on Thursday, he’d graciously asked if there was any way he could help the family. All of a sudden, it seemed urgent to Andrea that she do something on Easter morning. And she knew exactly what it should be.
    A few years ago, we’d gone to a mass out on Cape Cod with my family. The priest had just returned from Africa, where he worked as a missionary. And he talked about his work and how much it meant to him and he went into this homily that we always remembered. He would say, “God is good,” and the response was “All the time.” Then he’d say, “All the time,” and the response was “God is good.” This priest was trying so hard to get a crowd of very proper Catholics in stuffy Hyannis, Massachusetts, to really enter into the spirit of the thing, and it struck us as funny and moving at the same time.
    That became one of our family sayings. We’d be saying good-bye to someone at the airport or we’d be hanging up the phone and one person would say, “God is good” and the other would answer, “All the time.” It was just one of those codesevery family has that binds you together. In times of crisis it was a reminder to be thankful for what we had.
    Andrea lay in bed, unable to sleep. The minutes clicked by, 6 a.m., 6:30. She could have kicked herself. She was thinking, Everyone, even the worst Catholic, goes to church on Easter morning. Why didn’t I ask the bishop of Vermont to request all the priests to use that little homily in their masses? I could have had the whole state of Vermont saying it! That image of thousands of people from Burlington to the college kids in Brattleboro to all the sleepy little farming communities repeating those simple words was very powerful to her.
    “I had to do it,” Andrea said.
    She jumped out of bed, ran to Alison, and asked her if she could request that both Father Privé in Morrisville and Father Danielson in Underhill say the homily. Then she went about her morning routine. My mom arrived from Florida—she couldn’t stay away any longer. And my sisters were getting ready to go home to their families.
    Little did Andrea know, Alison called the priest and couldn’t get a hold of him, so she jumped in her car and started driving. The GPS sent her the opposite way and she ended up driving mile after mile in the wrong direction, terribly afraid that she would miss the priest. But she finally turned around and made it to the church and Father Privé said he’d be happy to do it.
    Around 11 a.m., Andrea thought, Where the heck is Alison? She’d been gone for five hours. Right then, her co-worker, Jonathan, walked in and said, “You’ve got to hear this.” And he took his iPhone, hit “Speaker,” and put the phone on the kitchen table. Alison, being Catholic herself, felt the need to stay at the church. And Andrea could hear a mass in progress,and it came to the homily and the priest began to sing, “God is good!” and the people in the church called back, “All the time.” Father Privé had managed to put our family motto into a song. Andrea felt a huge wave of emotion sweep over her.
    She leaned her head against the wall and started to cry. She thought of all those people who didn’t really know me, doing this for our family. Through her tears, she looked up and out the dining room window. It had begun to snow, which is one