Football Saturday

Today I'm going to watch my 9 year-old grandson play football. It's a lot of fun to watch. He's a good little player, but of course he's only 9 and so many things can change. One thing working against him is, he apparently inherited his speed from our side of the family so... let's just say the odds of him ever earning a paycheck from football are, ummmmm remote. But he has fun and we love watching his games. When my wife's nephews were younger she used to LOVE going to watch their Little League games, Jr. High basketball games, you name it. We'd drive all over the area to watch and she'd be standing on the sidelines or in the bleachers cheering their every move. She even learned the names of some of the other kids on the teams so she could encourage them too. She wasn't much of a football fan though. Just never got into it. I know if she'd had the chance to watch one of her little mans football games though, she'd be ALL over it. She was so looking forward to when he started Little League.

Here's the thing though. She never got the chance. She had a massive heart attack a little over three years after the Blond Child was killed by that drunken SOB. I read the autopsy report. I know what it said. I understand she had a massive heart attack to a part of the heart that you don't want damaged. I also know what I believe. I saw her before the Blond Child's death. And I saw her after. Sure, she was the same person, but she wasn't anything like the person she was before. She still laughed. She still smiled. But nowhere near as much and without the same, I don't know, intensity maybe, that she did before. Her amazingly blue eyes (and when I say they were amazing, you have no idea) lost a lot of their sparkle. In my soul I believe that she did the best that she could to survive the loss of her youngest child. I really do. And I also believe that after the onset of her symptoms, the chest pain on a Tuesday afternoon that came on when she was playing in our pool with her beloved little man, the chest pains that led to her visit to the local ER where they diagnosed a problem for the first time, the chest pains that led to her bypass surgery three days later, the chest pains that put her in the operating room with a skilled team of surgeons, surrounded by a support team on top of their games, the same chest pains that triggered the massive heart attack that she never recovered from despite the best efforts of an outstanding medical team, weren't caused by some congenital defect or some neglected health issue.

They were caused by the loss of the Blond Child.

They were caused by the uproar that loss created in her life, in her sense of the way things are supposed to be. And they gave her a rare opportunity. This is what I believe and this is what I rely on to get up out of bed everyday. The belief that on That Friday, when she was on the operating table, she saw the opportunity to be reunited with her shopping partner, her tanning partner, her workout partner. Sure, she loved everyone here in this dimension, but it wasn't the same. I get up every day because I believe those two are together somewhere, spending overtime checks like there's no tomorrow. Except there's always a tomorrow and each one has an overtime check waiting for them. And they are the definition of happy.

So today as I go to watch the 9 year-old that she worshipped, play football without the Nana he adored, all I can do is try to wrap my head around how the careless, selfish act of one person changed so much, both in the blink of an eye and in ripples, years later...