The Macks spent the next day, Good Friday, planning their son’s graveside service. When the funeral director learned the baby was baptized Catholic, he called Holy Cross to see if the child could be buried in its cemetery. The parish agreed.
Another priest then serving at Holy Cross, Father John Gabage, presided at the interment. Afterward the Macks walked and walked around the cemetery.
About 30 minutes later, Father Gabage approached them and said, “I just want you to know that Holy Cross is here for you as a community. If you need any help let us know. If you need support, please, I’m here to give you support,” Tamara Mack recalled.
He arranged for Tamara to meet with Diane Dellinger, who heads the parish grief support ministry that promotes spiritual healing. “I always knew about God,” said Mack, whose mother is a Seventh-Day Adventist. “Mom always let us know about God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I took it for granted, did not take life so seriously.”
Soon she began praying every morning. She remembered how her mother sent her sister and her to Catholic schools in Jamaica to learn more about God and about Christianity. There she prayed “five times a day. At that time I felt I had to. It was an obligation.”
Now she chose to pray. She visited Holy Cross cemetery six months after Tré’s death. “I was just broken. I could find no comfort.” She decided to visit Holy Cross Church. As she arrived, she saw Father Gabage walking toward the church. He recognized her and said, “Your baby’s OK; he’s with God.”
“Father Gabage had no idea what I was going through that day,” Mack said. “But I know that God sent him in my path at the right time because I couldn’t find comfort.”
As she thought about Father Gabage’s words, about her son being with God, “I started feeling better, a comfort in my heart.”
‘Why me again?’
That comfort was shattered last April. Three months into a second pregnancy, she miscarried.
“After Tré, I felt like this would never happen again,” she said. “I said, ‘God, why me again?’ It was like my faith had been tested.”
(Story continues below)
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But she kept praying. She decided she would begin her RCIA journey. She told her husband, “I have to go.”
She’s found solace off and on during her journey. Last Sunday, for instance, the first reading from Habakkuk stated: “Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”
“I’m not alone,” Mack said. “All those prophets back then were going through it,” asking why.
She decided to learn more about the faith and joined RCIA. Fears that the classes might be boring quickly evaporated.
“The questions they were asking were intriguing, like ‘How do you know there is a God?’” Mack said. “I thought, ‘Why did I think that learning about God would be boring?’”
She started to attend daily Mass. One day as she walked out, an older woman struck up a conversation. That woman had lost two children, at ages 10 and 5. Tamara Mack came to realize many others faced situations as bad, and perhaps at times worse as her own.