A Faith Stronger Than Evil

Jimmy Breslin

November 11, 2001

"How old?" the mother was asked.

"One month." She looked down at the pink bundle in her arms.

"This makes her first funeral," I said to the mother.

"I hope it's the last of these," she said.

She was standing inside the entrance to the packed St. Francis de Sales church in Belle Harbor Friday morning. Through the doors and over the heads of the people standing, you could see the priests saying mass for firefighter Richard Allen.

The mother said the baby's name was Anna and that she was Connie Hickey. The father is Robert Hickey, a firefighter.

There was a much older man standing alongside her and he was looking down and shaking his head.

"I am trying to contemplate something that I no longer understand," he was saying. "Why do all these young people have to die? And die horribly, apparently. I usually don't question the religion, but there have been so many of these, all I see is notices for funerals for these young people, that I wonder why it has to be. Where is the justice?"

"I'm having the same trouble," I said, "One too many funerals or memorials or whatever you call them, and you start asking things that you never did before."

"You just have to have faith," the mother, Connie Hickey, said.

"Yes, but how do you explain people so young dying so horribly?" I said. "What's that about? What about inside here? Then there was a woman waiting for a bus outside the buildings and burning jet fuel came out of the sky on her. How do you explain God's mercy then?"

"Faith," Connie Hickey said.

"Does that answer for all these innocent people suffering and dying? What is that about?"

"It just makes your faith stronger," she said.

"How many Catholic schools did you go to for that?" I asked.

"None. I went to public schools. I believe that."

Usually, when I went into one of these moods of asking out loud - "If God is so great, why does he let a young guy get burned to death and leave children?" - I called my friend, Father Mychal Judge at St. Francis of Assisi church on West 31st Street. On Sept. 11, when I was going down to the Trade Center, I called him at the rectory and got his answering tape. I left a message asking him to call my house and leave a place where I could find him, and maybe we could say a prayer. I got there just in time for the Two Tower to come down and kill thousands, including Father Judge.

I don't know when it was, days later, that my friend Norman Ochs called to tell me that Richie Allen was missing, he was the oldest son of Gail McGuire Allen. I know her family. Right away, Gail told me that she had registered with the medical examiner's office then went to the pier that handles the missing persons and the Fire Department. "We're doing everything so they can find him," she said, "We have faith,"

Her brother, Bobby, a firefighter, was at The Dig, as the workers call the former World Trade Center, He was going through rubble with his hands, looking for her oldest son, his nephew.

Everytime I called her, she said, "We don't give up. We have faith."

Bobby one day changed from speaking of finding Richie Allen alive to finding his body so his mother could have "closure."

It is the common word of the times, and after digging for Richie Allen for everyday since Sept. 11, he can say what he wants, but I writhe at the word "closure." It is a fraud perpetrated by those whose hands touch nothing that is not at least a thousand miles from reality. No mother closes the feelings, as if a dresser drawer, on the sorrow and images of her oldest child suddenly dead.

But people use such words - and faith particularly - to get through the long numbing days.

When there was no hope, yesterday's memorial was scheduled, the faces were those of Rockaway Beach through the decades. The talks by Richie Allen's friends were from beach life, surfing and life guards. "I sat on 36th Street, he sat on 38th. We always went in on saves together."

The difference was in the voice of a young woman, Judy, the sister. She stood up in the brand new tradition of women speaking at funerals and she was pure thrilling Irish as she talked of her brother running up the staircase of the World Trade Center, lifted by the thought of saving.

Anna Hickey, age 1 month, was still in the entranceway in her mother's arms. She had gone through her first funeral from start to finish, gone through it sleeping in the arms of her mother, sleeping softly in the faith that her mother would keep her safe. And the mother holding her looked to the altar in faith that the horror of the young death had made only stronger.