HELEN Hickey has spent two decades preparing children and their families for First Communion and Confirmation but she was totally unprepared for a request she received from one of the parents years down the track.
She received a call letting her know that the mother of two of the children who’d been through sacramental preparation with her was terminally ill and wanted her to prepare a funeral liturgy.
“I’ll never forget it … (One of the parish secretaries) rang me and said, ‘Helen, I’ve got some really, really devastating news to tell you’,” Helen, who has been sacramental co-ordinator in the Parish of St Joseph and St Anthony, Bracken Ridge, for the past 20 years, said.
She was told that the middle-aged mother was terminally ill with cancer and had been given eight weeks to live.
“She’s in palliative care and she wants me to ask you if you will look after the Mass and music for her funeral,” the parish secretary said.
Helen agreed and decided to visit Patricia (not her real name) straight away, before it was too late.
She contacted Patricia’s family and arranged to visit her in hospital the next day.
“She was sitting in the chair there with a beautiful, colourful kaftan on, looking a million dollars …,” Helen said.
“I knelt down beside her chair, and we both cried …
“It’s then that she said to me, ‘Helen, I didn’t know it at the time but my journey with the sacramental program it’s prepared me for dying …’”
“The most beautiful celebration” was held for Patricia and her family at St Joseph’s Church a few weeks later.
For Helen and her team of volunteers it was a reminder of how God touched the hearts of the ones they served through the sacramental program.
As she retires as sacramental co-ordinator after 20 years, she said it had been most rewarding for her serving hundreds of children and families.
“I saw so often that families truly valued that they had the opportunity to be close to their God … I suppose (it was about) giving opportunities for them to also see what’s important in life,” she said.
“Life’s busy with everything that’s happening with a young family but so often you could feel the gratitude of families for what they were able to share here throughout the sacramental journey.
“And Fr Gerry (Hefferan, parish priest) would often say to families, ‘Expect, at some stage during the sacramental journey, to be touched by God …’”
For Helen, there was always the sense that sacramental preparation touched parents as well as their children.
Reflecting back over the twists and turns of her own life, including time as a teacher when she had to resign because of debilitating back pain, she’s reminded that “God writes on crooked lines sometimes”, referring to a quote sometimes attributed to St Teresa of Avila.
She’s been formed for all of that by her late parents Joe and Von Orchard, who lived in Hendra parish.
“I guess I learnt from Mum and Dad – you only know this when you look back on your life – but what was important in life – to love, to respect, to know that your God walked with you,” Helen said.
“They were both very humble, humble people but family and God were the important elements for Mum and Dad …
“And, yes, my Mum and Dad were just amazing people.
“Dad had lived through three-and-a-half years in Changi as a prisoner of war.
“He was just the most humble, gentle soul, and everyone related to him. He was just a very relateble, wonderful man.
“Mum was just a very generous person … She probably only went to about Year 8 in high school – maybe Dad the same – but their lives just reflected so much life and love and wisdom.
“Dad ended with some dementia, which was really sad to see, but it didn’t change who he was …
“While he couldn’t remember any of our names, you’d appear – during his last three years in the nursing home – and his face’d light up, couldn’t remember our names, but he knew us, and addressed us as ‘Matey’.”
Joe died in his early 80s and Von, just over five years ago, at 97.
“I am so grateful – for Mum and Dad, for all the important things that they passed on to me,” Helen said.
“It was never about money and what you did and where you went; … home was always a place of welcome …
“I know I’ve been greatly blessed with having had such wonderful Mum and Dad.”
Helen counts her blessings, too, as she looks back to her time as a young teacher at Holy Rosary School, Windsor, where Fr Bernie Costigan, who first appointed her sacramental co-ordinator at Bracken Ridge, was then parish priest.
She had been teaching but, at the time, was working part-time as assistant principal for religious education as she battled chronic back pain.
“I’d had time off for two (unsuccessful) spinal fusions,” she said.
“It was a small school and I was able to just take on the APRE role – five-and-a-half hours – and I couldn’t sustain a day, the back pain was so bad …
“Then I had to make the very difficult decision to resign (from Brisbane Catholic Education) because I’d get in the car (after work) and I’d be in tears.
“It was terrible – never thinking that I’d ever work again.”
Then came what Helen describes as “nothing short of a miracle”.
“A friend begged me to come and see a different doctor and I probably felt as if I’d been written off by the medical profession, in some ways …,” she said.
“Anyway, it probably was once again, maybe God was directing me this way because I know (my husband) Brian wasn’t keen for me to go and see yet another specialist after I’d resigned from Windsor, but he supported me.
“This friend, who’d suffered some back pain as well, introduced us to the wonderful Dr Cook.
“And I thought at the time, ‘This is going to be a waste of time … He’ll look back and think Dr So and So – he’s a top surgeon, blah, blah, blah …’
“(He) recommended an MRI scan, which weren’t available in the 1980s when I had the other two surgeries.
“And I can remember my Mum and Dad, at the time … because I think it was $650 (for the MRI scan), no rebate, and I wasn’t working, so Mum and Dad said ‘No questions; we’re paying for this …’
“The MRI showed a bit of original disc still protuding into the spinal canal, which should have been removed in the other two fusions.
“(The doctor) was almost so pleased to see evidence of why I was in so much pain …”
Helen had the corrective surgery and then a three-month recovery without sitting.
“Within probably four weeks, five weeks, getting over more major surgery, I could feel the pain going,” she said.
“So, a lot of prayers were with me …
“I just was overwhelmed then with this (sense of having my) life back – life that you could endure.
“And I did my very best to do what I could in little bursts but it was just too much for work.”
It was enough to give her a new lease on life though.
“A few years later Brian and I were blessed with our two beautiful girls, Jess and Erin …” she said.
“I can still remember – we were at St Flannan’s (Zillmere) at the time, and Brian was driving along Beams Road as we were going for Jess’ baptism, and the tears were rolling down his face.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’
“And he said, ‘I just can’t believe …’ A beautiful blessing.
“And (looking back) that’s why I started to think … how God writes on crooked lines, because, you just think – I trained as a teacher, worked on and off for nine years and then resigned due to health, and you just think, ‘God had another idea’.”
For several years she’s been able to combine her parish role with being a pastoral co-ordinator at St Benedict’s Primary School, Mango Hill.
She said she loved both roles.
“What a humbling experience it has been for me to share so many ‘touched by the grace of God’ moments with families in the St Joseph’s community over the past 20 years,” she said.
“I have always been passionate about meeting families where they are in life and providing the sacred space for God to do the rest.
“I’d always say, as parents and as a community, we plant seeds that will one day grow.”
