Half-time at the wake:

...It isn't going to work...

...The final call, another warning, from my sister, came at six in the morning...

...An uncle - one of my mother's several brothers - would celebrate the Mass...

...But Michael had been refused for believing in too many gods, and Paul had confessed to an inability quite yet to wholly accept the transubstantiation of Christ, as well as his ascent into heaven in physical form...

...Valentine's day, halfway through Febru- ary, in what in Boston at least felt like the dead of winter...

...But I've got to get back to Washington...

...Of course," Father Broyles said, and opened the door to a small windowless room next to the confessional...

...And I was not really quite so eager to believe in the divinity of Christ as I had claimed...

...I do wish we could talk...

...Right," I said to myself: "Just like Bobby when they buried Jack...

...Dad isn't himself...

...My mother had lived for a little more than three years after having been diagnosed as having inoperable lung cancer...

...But it was overwhelmed by the dread of the shame I was going to bring on myself and the family at the Mass two days later...

...No luck...

...As I hung up, my younger brother appeared in the distance in the baggage-claim area...

...It would make life easier...

...And I think I could do it without feeling like a hypocrite...

...After very brief pleasantries and condolences indeed, Father Broyles, as I am calling him, led us back outdoors and across a short piece of gravel to the church and a glassed-in area to the side of the altar that was used at Mass by parents with small children...

...Father, I'll be honest, of course, and brief," I said...

...My father called the rectory...

...I suspect that much of the grieving had gone on quietly, almost subconsciously, during the illness...

...Could I risk approaching the rail...

...But if I had been marginally dishonest it was to achieve the goal of being able to receive the wafer...

...I had been reasonably honest...

...By the way, the second one, the very thin boy...

...He thinks we should act like the Kennedys.'' The remark revived an old, almost forgotten but sharp identification with Robert F. Kennedy, who was for most of his life another middle brother of three...

...Janet smiled slightly, pointed to Paul and made the same gesture...

...And I don't know what to make of that...

...You go in and talk with the priest, face-to-face if you wish...

...I asked...

...Yes," I said...

...After I identified myself, the nurse said: "Your mother passed away about an hour ago...

...I was also awaiting the publication of my first book, and broke...

...I was not with her...

...I was on a plane to Boston a little more than an hour later...

...Not a bloody tear...

...I think I've figured it out," Beth whispered to me one evening in the kitchen...

...There had been no edge in anything I had said...

...I wish I did, of course...

...Then I'll be going back to Asia...

...Not then...

...We were - are - four strong-willed adults...

...I wondered what I would do if Father Broyles did not assist...

...I'm going first," I said to Michael...

...Couldn't we just talk...

...even more than priests, he was familiar with corpses...

...It's the sacrament of reconciliation...

...But not a tear from me...

...I'll be quick...

...My older brother, Michael, who was forty-five, happened to be in the U.S...

...Where are you liv- ing...

...searching...

...I was aware when I used the word"sacrament'' that I was doing so for effect, a mild effect...

...The line then gets more conventional...

...HALF-TIME AT THE WAKE DAVID BUTLER WORKING UNDER A DEADLINE My mother died shortly after dawn on St...

...But my mother's funeral is the day after tomorrow.'' "I can't...

...emotion had taken over...

...Fine," I said...

...I wish I'd had a Jesuit education, so that there were a little more intellectual force in this...

...I leaned over to Beth and said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes or so,'' and then hurried out into the low clear light of the February late-afternoon...

...My son, I get this all the time from young people who don't believe but want to get married in the church to please their parents," Father Broyles said...

...I'm sorry...

...Father Broyles asked...

...And so, on Monday morning my father and sister received the sacrament while the rest of the congregation looked at the broad-shouldered backs of the mystic, the doubter, and the scrupulous saint, all shamed...

...Night after night before the writing sessions through the last two years I had stood before my large work table in a tiny apartment on Sixteenth Street, ten blocks north of the White House, engaged in something very close to prayer...

...I'm looking...

...As I drank tasteless coffee from a paper cup in a Dunkin' Donuts across the street from the church, the anger started to come...

...Replaying the conversation, I was surprised - no, had been surprised as the words came out - that I had been so eager to establish my intellectual credentials with the mention of the book...

...I was somewhat sur- prised when my father very mildly corrected me for referring to the day's afternoon and evening sessions at the funeral home as wakes...

...I'd be the only one . Five or six of us in the front pew to the right of the casket, all the relatives in tren-ches behind us, watching as my father and Michael and Paul and Beth filed out for Communion, I kneeling there with a scarlet S for sinner glowing in neon on the back of my beautiful gray suit jacket...

...He was a follower of the guru Baba Muktananda and then, when Muktananda died, of the strikingly attractive young Indian woman - she bears a strong resemblance to Joan Baez - Muktananda appointed as his successor...

...I know,'' I said...

...He was a Navy chaplain for years and years...

...The youngest, Beth, is a Boston lawyer...

...It's not like the old days, " my father said that morning...

...Thanks,, Father...

...In the little room, I had felt no anger toward the priest...

...Paul and Janet sat behind them, and Beth right behind them in a third...

...Father Broyles had the face of a man who had spent his fair share of time in officers' clubs here and there around the world, but hadn't been beaten by them...

...You'll like him, David...

...Michael cried almost soundlessly through parts of the service, and when our uncle spoke especially...

...My hands were shaking as I stubbed out a cigarette, took a last sip of the wretched coffee...

...But at the moment I don't believe in the divinity of Christ...

...I used to think I really would be a hypocrite if I received the sacrament," I said...

...I am two years younger than Michael, and was eager for my book to be published in large part because I knew it would give me the wherewithal to return to Bangkok...

...At four that after- noon, filing into the rectory, I lingered be- hind with Beth and said, "This is a mistake...

...Or would Father Broyles have spoken to the visiting uncle first: "An interesting family...

...But I am looking...

...There was no one waiting...

...Thank God," I whispered...

...I have just finished writing a book...

...And this man, Father Broyles, is' terrific...

...We need to talk...

...I agree...

...There had been warning phone calls...

...Someone would meet me at the airport, Beth said...

...visiting hours...

...The first death in a scattered family car- ries some discoveries...

...It was true: I would not feel like a hypocrite...

...I can't administer the sacrament to please your father...

...But I was working on a magazine assignment in Washington, D.C., where I lived at that time...

...And my father...

...I had not done so in many years, and I don't think Michael had either...

...Beth passed...

...When she turned, I pointed to myself and made the thumbs-down gesture...

...Thank you," I said...

...he can't receive Communion.'' (I realize now that no priest would do such a thing...

...I would very much like to receive Communion on Monday, for my father's sake...

...Moment by moment, roiling anxiety was ratcheting up in my chest...

...I slipped into the pew that Beth had left for her confession, and tapped Janet on the shoulder of her winter coat...

...Now Michael moved past me toward the little room...

...My younger brother, Paul, then thirty-nine, is a surgeon with a wife and three children...

...DAVID BUTLER is the author of The Fall of Saigon (Simon & Schuster), and previously served as NBC Radio's Saigon correspondent...

...From what my father had said, I had allowed myself to imagine that I was wrong, that it all could be done in generalities at the large conference table where we briefly sat...

...Two days later, my father in his grief did an uncharacteristic thing: he prevailed upon his four children to go to confession so that we could receive Communion at the funeral Mass...

...I called the hospital and asked for the intensive care unit...

...In Washington...

...Yes, we would be received that afternoon, after the 1:00 to 3:00 P.M...

...In any case, when it became clear that my father was going to get through the several sessions of "visiting hours" and all the other gatherings in those days without his composure breaking, I took it as a cue to do likewise...

...I'm tied up there for a few more months...

...Not since...

...Father Broyles started ahead of me into a conventional confessional box as the rest of the family, including Paul's wife, Janet, who is a Protestant, settled into pews...

...I wish we could...

...I don't understand it," my father had said as he drove us home from the failed confessions, the four of us exploding with the laughter of relief: "As far as I'm concerned you're all good people...

...Paul was a surgeon...

...1988 by David Butler...

...during a period in his life when he was usually at an ashram north of Bombay...

...They don't call it confession anymore...

...Paul and Beth may have received Communion now and then through the last fifteen years or so...

...My father and Michael sat in one pew...

...He looked competent and trim and a little rugged, like some men who spend twenty years in the Navy...

...I wish you were here...

...A general admission of sins, and the forgiveness...

...He currently lives in Thailand where he is working on a novel...

...I've got a magazine assignment with a deadline...

...He appeared to be a little startled at the assertion of authority...