Victim Of Circumstance

 I was headed up the hill that rises from underneath the overpass near our house, determined to keep things as normal as possible, given the circumstances. My mother was fading quickly and I flinched with each new email or text. I figured that I could get away with my Saturday morning run, and come back to finish the day by distracting myself with any number of mindless activities. 

That was not to happen. About half a mile from my house, the little bell that rings in my earbuds interrupted Bruce Springsteen singing about Cadillac Ranch. It was a text from my older brother. It wasn't a funny tweet from my son. It was a text from my brother. It wasn't a reminder to check the school Facebook page. It was a text from my brother. The text that told me my mother was gone. 

So I stopped my run and walked back down the hill to my house. Once there, I broke the news and my wife's heart by telling her the news. Then I set about making phone calls to all those I believed would want to be notified of the passing. Hours passed, and I kept remembering that I needed to call this person back, or maybe I had forgotten. In between, I took deep breaths and dealt with the way things felt out of time. 

And at some point, I remembered one of the distractions I had planned for the day: The University of Colorado was playing Cal Berkeley in football. I had lost track of my distractions. I turned on the television just in time to see the Buffaloes go ahead in overtime. I stuck around long enough to watch them defend their goal line, turning away the last chance attempt of the Bears to tie the game back up. Colorado won their first game of the season. At home. 

Suddenly I was struck with a flood of memories. All of them having to do with the season tickets my mother had in that same end zone I had been watching. All the glory. All the pain. All the mediocre seasons. All the times we walked out of that stadium, sometimes deflated, sometimes elated. Mostly we went to hang together, and to share the football experience we call "being a fan."

This season has been a deflated one for the CU Buffaloes. They had not won a game in five tries. They had fired their coach, and used their bye week to try and put things back together. And they had picked this particular moment, hours after one of their biggest fans had gone to that big grandstand in the sky to win their first game. 

In a day that was filled with a lot of tears, this brought a smile to my face. You can tell me it was just a coincidence. 

Mom and I know different.