"CATCH THE BALL STEPHEN HILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOOD GRACIOUS!"

   

"I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it's both."  (forrest gump)

    I knew nothing of this man and his family that started sitting in front of us at Georgia Tech football games some 15 years ago or so.  But over the next  15 years we were afforded the opportunity to get to know a fine soul, one that tolerated me becoming sometimes loud, sometimes stupid, sometimes, uh, "over-served."  There in section 206 he and I  became buds, we became philosophers, we became coaches  (convinced that we knew full well what needed to happen on this play, this fourth down or in this time-out than more-so than anyone Tech had on their payroll.)  A good day was one where I went home with my hand stinging because he and I had exchanged so many high-fives.  


     However accidental it was that he and his beautiful family ended up part of our lives, the years that followed acquainted me with his destiny - To make everyone around him happier, better, stronger and feeling important and good about themselves..  It didn't matter if it was family, stranger, someone getting their chemo treatment at the same time he was getting his or just some goober sitting behind him at a ballgame.  Perhaps it was his destiny to be that feather that floats on the breeze in and out of lives that needed him..  For a large chunk of the time that I had the pleasure to watch those ballgames with him, I was in terrible health due to large amounts of excess weight.  There was a time when my family had to consider whether or not it was safe for me to go through the rigors required of climbing to the upper tier of that venerable old stadium.  I was, quite often, mocked in public, pointed at, laughed at and became a sideshow for many sad folks. It often made me rather reclusive, the game was - after all- going to be on t.v. (and a Georgia Tech football game was sometimes the only time I'd even consider putting  myself in a crowd.)  But knowing HE would be there I insisted on getting there.  And  there he was, just glad I'd made it, not seeing the fat guy, not seeing  the one getting help going up and down stairs, I was just ME and he always seemed glad to see ME. Many times he offered to get me a bottle of water or something from the concession stand knowing that navigating stairs more than I had to wasn't possible.  He'd asked how I was feeling but without dwelling on it.  Instead, he knew I was there to talk football and I imagine he knew that the time I spent talking it with him took my mind off much sadder issues that usually occupied my mind.  He never mentioned my weight to me until I lost  a CONSIDERABLE amount of it and could then bound up and and down those stairs like a teenager and get my own bottle of water.  THEN he took a minute to shake my hand and say "You look great."   He could've slipped me a wad of cash and it wouldn't have felt any better.

     We got word that his fight was over very early Saturday morning, just as I'd started loading tailgating necessities into my truck, getting ready to watch the boys play their final home game of 2014.  We contemplated not even going to the game wondering if that would show a a certain measure of disrespect to the passing of our friend,.  But in those pre-dawn hours we decided there was no greater measure of respect that we could show him than by being there and being very loud.  At our tailgating festivities we drank a toast to him (though I'm not sure he approved of such libations) And then, in the third quarter,  I stood up on my row and gave the loudest "WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD???????????!!!!!!!!!!" cheer that I've ever mustered for the inhabitants of section 206.  Those around us joined with great gusto, emboldened by the beating those wearing white and gold were throwing down on Clemson.  I'd like to think he heard us and laughed.  Many times over the years he and I dared each other to give that cheer our best shot.  My bride told me that on this Saturday she'd never heard my voice get that loud.  I told her I must've had some help.  Speaking of getting some help, those poor boys from Clemson didn't stand a chance.  I like to think Bill was somewhere, giving a push the likes of which he could've never given from section 206   At least one son of Tech did, indeed,  "arise, behold!" 

The spirit of the cheering throng
Resounds with joy revealing
A brotherhood in praise and song,
In memory of the days gone by.
Oh, Scion of the Southland!
In our hearts you shall forever fly.

   

Returning to the scene of the crime...

     The crime in question started 14 or 15 miles down the road with a simple doctor's appointment in Buford, Georgia.  I'd been fighting bronchitis and,  as everyone that has known me my 50 years on earth, a simple respiratory infection that is a nuisance to most quickly becomes something that kicks my posterior, all because of respiratory issues I inherited from our dear Mother (all the sweet things I COULD'VE gotten from her but I got bad lungs...anyway.)  On  October 21, 2014  I went to see why this infection was hanging on so long and  had beaten two rounds of antibiotics and why I couldn't take a shower or pour a cup of coffee without having to sit down and rest afterwards. 
     The doctor came into the room and after the obligatory "Who's Tech playing this week?" (my doctors know me well)   He put a stethoscope to my lungs and heart and said "Dang....that ain't right" and looked outside the exam room door and hollered at his nurse  - "BRING ME THE EKG AND CALL GWINNETT COUNTY!!!"   I figured they'd had a toilet backing up or low water pressure and wanted the county to come out and see if they could fix it!!   No, he was summoning some brave young men from the fire station right up the street to come and take me somewhere for help.   I asked him what was wrong.  He said "I need you to relax.  But you ARE in A-FIB at the moment."   I asked for an explanation.  He said "It means you're not going home....we're going to the hospital."   Again, I asked him for an education on A-FIB.  He said "either you've had a cardiac episode or you're about to have one....either way, we need to get you to a hospital.....but relax."    Hmmmm...ok...there's a pack of wild dogs chasing you and you might survive....or you might end up supper.....but relax.
      When these brave young men arrived (I'm  fairly certain that I have socks older than all of them) I was - in spite of my fear - impressed at the way they went about their work. The one in charge told the doctor (after seeing my EKG) "We're not going to Gainesville (where my doctor wanted them to go)   We're not taking that chance.  We need to get him someplace closer."    Not exactly words of comfort.  They decided to take me to Northside/Forsyth in Cumming, apparently figuring I'd live that long!  As we made our way out to the ambulance  I told one of them that he probably  would've eaten a bigger bowl of Wheaties if he'd known he was going to have to drag ME into the back of a truck.  His response - "I ain't lost one yet, Mr. Freeman.  Me and you both are about to go for a ride."   I wanted to give him a big man hug.  He was right....we both got in the back of that truck. And we both made it to Northside Hospital..
     I say all of that to say this.  During that ride, despite hearing transmissions from ambulance to hospital telling them how far out we were and what EKG was showing and to make sure they had this, that and the other thing ready to stick, strap and glue to me,  it wasn't my demise I was most afraid of facing.   I knew it was a possibility but it became a separate issue.  What was at issue was the fear that I might cross into whatever happens to us  when we leave this very temporal existence without seeing the sweetest, most perfect face I know ever again.   She's the soul that braved taking me as her own.  She's the soul that had a thousand other chances in life but decided I was the one she wanted to live with "til death do us part." I just didn't want that to be right there, right then.
     Long story short (too late, right)  she made it to the hospital and the grasp of her hand felt better than anything they'd given to relax me.  The minute she was there she became two people. The RN I married and my wife.  She was asking doctors questions and keeping a close eye on monitors.  With her there, I felt like  I was gonna' beat this thing like a rented mule. Still, it was touch and go for a while (as my heart wouldn't find normal rhythm until they forced it to with a dose of electricity late into my second day there.)    But that very first night, after they moved me to a room on the cardiac floor,  she fell asleep with her head on the railing of my bed, not letting go of my hand, refusing to be comfortable anywhere else.  Again, it made me realize I was walking out of this damn hospital and nothing would stop me. And a bunch of tests and procedures later (some of which hurt like hell - I've never had a needle puncture the lining of my lungs) I did, in fact, get in her car and come home and sit in my recliner and pet my Labrador Retriever.
     Fast forward to yesterday, when I went to a professional building next to the hospital for a follow-up appointment with one of the specialists that saved my life.  I saw an ambulance flying around to the emergency entrance.  I felt compelled to follow.  The ambulance parked.  And so did a woman nearby who got out of her blue car and broke several olympic records running to the ER entrance to meet the soul being rolled down the same hall I'd recently traversed.  I watched her and I cried because I imagined my own angel running across that same parking lot and felt guilty that I'd put her through that.
       Her favorite show comes on tonight.  I'm gonna' cook her a steak and rub the feet that she works on all day while she watches that show.  And I'm going to say a prayer for some folks we know that have taught me what life and love and eternal things are all about.  They've done this all while watching  their husband and father (one of the finest spirits I've encountered)  fight something far worse than what I faced.  To my boy I say this...let those 3 lovely ladies take care of you and think  "THERE ya' go...."  (which I've heard you say with every Georgia Tech first down.)
"So, if I had a barrel of rum and sugar 3,000 pounds....a college bell to put it in and a clapper to stir it 'round.  I'd drink to...."   THAT good fellow.......
(And also to my cousin Patrick who - standing in my hospital room - told me he missed my writing.  You lit this fire....) 

Dear Ray Rice,

      Granted, I've got a soft spot for football players.  It's the only sport in which I've participated (in an "organized" fashion - I also played a bunch of touch football and tackling games in the neighborhood.  Tackling is fun)  It's the only meeting point my father (who died when I was pretty young) and I ever had together.  When we could talk about nothing else, we could talk about why tackling has left the game (Dear GOD, if he could see the way people tackle now!)   But here's the other side of the equation - growing up in a house full of sisters taught me that it's never (repeat NEVER) appropriate to put your hands on a member of the fairer sex.

     They can be hard to understand.  They can be hard to relate to on ANY terms.   But guess what? They're human spirits who are not as  physically strong as we were built to be.  Note that I said "physically."  Doesn't mean that they're not strong.  My dearly departed mother used to say "there's a good reason the Good Lord decided to let women have the babies - men would've surrendered."  She also used to tell me that "any man who would hit a woman is a coward.  It's easy to be brave when you know you're stronger."  How many movies and stories (and reality)  have we seen play out where chaos reigns until a woman tells everyone in the room to shut up and settle down?   From Mama Corleone ("Santino!!!  Don't interfere....") to Scarlett O'Hara ("God is my witness...")   They can kick ass and take names on their own terms.   Even now the woman I love the most can make me behave with a telling glance from across the room (or, usually, from her seat at a football game....yeah, I'm a lucky Neanderthal.) 

     So here's the rub Ray Rice.  I wish you well in whatever you choose to do going forward.  But stay away from anything that makes you a symbol for stronger and faster professional athletes, many of whom I've been fortunate enough to meet face to face. My impressions of them have always been that they're guys just like the rest of us.  All we see is them running over people, causing concussions, throwing  99 mph fastballs at batters' heads, stopping short-handed goals with high sticks or putting dunks back in faces, But I'm quit sure that MANY of them have one of those "weaker folks" somewhere saying "We need to talk..."    

The Sad Clown

     Make 'em laugh, make 'em have a good time and point out the absurd....do all that and they won't take notice of everything you hate about yourself.   That's not a quote.  That's the way I lived a lot of my life.  Self-confidence never my forte,  I lived looking for a thousand diversions to take people's attention away from what I thought they saw and put it, instead, on how darn entertaining and funny I can be (even if, on the inside, I thought myself to be one pathetic creature.)  As long as they thought I was fun I could fight my own demons. 
     And that's a word I've heard thrown around a lot in the last 24 hours - "Demons."  Very trendy.  Very psycho-babble. .  But something I fear that, sadly, is only associated with poor souls that have taken drastic measures.  "They were fighting demons."   "Here he is, discussing his own demons."  Hell!  We're ALL souls living inside very finite, physical vessels!  I would think that we're ALL fighting enemies that would seek to destroy by trying to teach us to define ourselves in very temporal terms.
    I grew up in a suburb of Atlanta that in a lot of ways was the "touch of country in the city" about which the Atlanta Rhythm Section sang so eloquently.  I went to school,  to church,  to Boy Scouts,  to the grocery store, to the barber shop and to the doctor with a lot of the same folks.  But, in each of those locales, there existed different caste systems, each independent of the others.  For instance, there were folks that would worship, sing and pray with me at church.  But at school -  there  in the world of student councils, cheerleaders, drill teams, exclusive lunch tables, clubs and homecoming dances -  they were forbidden from recognizing me as a living creature.  I warranted a fleeting glance in hallways between classes  -  "I know you, but you understand I can't talk to you here, right?"  It was in THAT world I learned to entertain people.  It was in that world that a literature teacher first taught me the concept of the sad clown.  Sad that - at such an innocent age - I could closely identify with what being a sad clown was all about. 
     Often the price of a creative mind is that it's nothing but a sponge.  It absorbs all that it sees and hears and there are no barriers to what it will let inside itself.  Unfortunately, the downside to that is that often the sad creeps in along with all the good stuff.  Even if you can hear the laughter and the accolades you can  also hear the jeers, coming mostly from yourself and the aforementioned demons.  And sometimes the bad stuff wins.  Sometimes you believe them when they tell you you're fighting battles you'll never win and that - despite the applause - you ain't about all that.  If you've fought them your whole life, sometimes you don't want to fight anymore. 
      So, yet again, we're burdened with sadness because someone whose day to day existence is light years from our own is now gone.  We wonder why we're so sad.  But then we realize that it's because their craft became something that diverted our attention away from our own realities.  Thanks for that, Robin Williams. Maybe you were tired and had no more craft to give.  Maybe the sad clown just wanted to go somewhere and smile just for the sake of smiling...not because it was his job to make the rest of us smile. 
    

'...cheer the living, dear...."

     Some days, you wake up with your brain too damn full.  Today a good friend of ours would've celebrated a birthday.  I wrote a blog when back when she died.  She loved the woman I love the most.  She was the friend I was most worried about meeting,  I knew her her opinion meant a lot to this sweet soul, the one I'd just started dating- the one with the world's cutest dimples and sweetest smile.  And hers was the death I watched that sweet soul grapple with the most, wondering why it had to happen.  I wish, still, I could tell her why.
     Then, when this hit my mind, I started thumbing through yesterday's local paper.  There was a story about about a gentleman that was the public address announcer for one of the local high schools for twenty-something years.  He'd taken the job voluntarily when his sons started school there.  He was 62 and out playing golf and had a heart attack.  For this high school, it was Tech losing Al Ciraldo or Georgia losing Larry Munson (still the only thing I've ever like about the evil empire in Athens.)  62?   That's 12 years from where I am right now!  Hell, the flip-flops I'm wearing are probably more than 12 years old...12 years go by right quick!  And 12 more years ain't NEAR enough time to build the life I want to build with the girl with the cutest dimples and sweetest smile.
     And then I started thinking about the first time I experienced an unexplainable death.  We found out my cousin Alan was sick when I was 16 years old.  Until I got married, nobody on the planet knew me as well as Alan did (even if I was only 18 when he died.)  I've never written  much about him because it still hurts too bad.  His is the only grave I ever go to and talk out loud.

     "I cannot buy you happiness, I cannot buy you years.  I cannot buy you happiness in place of all the tears.  But I can buy for you a gravestone, to lay behind your head.  Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they're no use to the dead."  

 (Steve Noonan/Greg Copeland - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1967)

     The first vehicle I ever drove (even before I was old enough to drive) was his 1970-something big, black Silverardo.  I now drive a big, black Ford F-150 with a lot more bells and whistles than his Silverardo had (he'd be shocked to know that I can answer my phone by pushing a button on my steering wheel!)   When I do go and talk to his grave, I always try to irritate him with a little truck envy.
     He taught me to love dogs, I think.  When the world's most beautiful Irish Setter died he dug a hole big enough to bury a Volkswagen, crying the whole time.  He'd be glad to know that since I ran into the kitchen for more coffee, scribbling notes for this blog on a piece of paper (and shedding a few tears myself) a Labrador Retriever followed me to find out what was wrong.
     When I was a small child he called me "Monkey."  Years after I was small child (when I was a teenager and he was pretty sick)  I was talking to him in the part of the day he and I used to always find ourselves talking.  The late hours of a summer day when the sun had gone down but the air's still hot and the lightning bugs and cicadas have come out to play.  "Monkey, just because this has happened to me doesn't mean that bad things are out there, waiting to happen to you.  Don't live scared..."  I wish to God that teen-aged awkwardness hadn't kept me from saying something more meaningful than "Ok, I won't."  I now know that those few words represent some of the greatest advice ever given me by anyone. 
     He'd be most disappointed if he knew that I STILL live very much afraid of many things.  I rationalize it by saying "well, if he'd lived longer, he would've found out how scary life can get!"    But somewhere, deep in my soul, I also know that he'd smack me upside the back of my head and throw me in Lake Lanier - "QUIT WHINING!  LET'S GO SWIMMING!!"   That's how I learned to swim, after all.  (He'd also probably be disappointed to find that you can't discipline a knucklehead in the waters of Lake Lanier anymore without a soccer mom calling 9-1-1 from the cul-de-sac that now resides where our woods and our playground used to grow.)
     I said all of that to say this - I was most confused by Alan's death and - at 50 years old - I'm still pretty confused.  If we leave here for a much better place, whey does everyone get so sad when someone dies?  I reckon it's because they're no longer here to help US figure out what's taking place in our very temporal neck of the woods.  I don't much care if I never walk the "streets of gold."  The only gold I've ever owned is the gold I purchased when I got married.  I'd just like to think that when my time comes,  I'll spend eternity pulling fish out of a lake with Alan and his father, my Uncle Ralph (who was more a father to me than my biological father.)  And then, when the girl with the cutest  dimples and the sweetest smile comes along later (you know, statistics show that's what will happen!)  I can say "Come over here and meet Alan..."
And he'll grin... "You did good, Monkey."
      

    

Baseball and the pretty little black-haired girl....

     Ham & Effie could do anything for the mill families - their wash, their cooking, their babysitting, their grocery shopping, any odd jobs that would make them a nickel or two to keep food on their own table.  The only thing they couldn't do was come up on the porch.  Wouldn't be proper for black folks to come up on white folks' property like that.  So when the wash was delivered you met them on the sidewalk.  When they delivered your groceries they left them there on that same sidewalk.  When the young un's were kept they walked to the corner to meet the old black couple that were at the same time family, employees, and outsiders.   When caring for this gaggle of mill children it was sometimes decided the afternoon could be best spent watching the Crackers play at Ponce de Leon Park.  At that time it was probably still called "Spiller Park" or "Spiller Field."  The only glitch was that for the children to remain in Ham & Effie's care they would have to sit in the "Colored" section of the old ballyard.

     In this group there was this one little black-haired girl perched there in the segregated seats watching baseball  (if, in fact, there WERE  seats..it might've been a standing only area.)  I imagine the other children pulling ponytails, begging for peanuts (if, in fact concessions were even afforded the "coloreds." ) and running circles around themselves, keeping themselves entertained during those long, slow summer games.  But in the midst of that childish chaos, I'm almost certain that little black-haired girl stood and stared at the game in front of her.   It would've been a sight to see, a little white girl being given a tutorial by the old black man, pointing out every nuance of a game that for her was a natural attraction, a first love,  not just sport or entertainment.  There were superstitions, tendencies, chess-like moves a manager makes in anticipation of the pitcher's spot coming up in the next inning, thousands of things you could see taking place, if only you knew what to watch for.  Folklore about the stars of the game visiting kids in the hospital and then pointing at outfield walls to make good on a promise to one of the sick kids....or superstars playing stickball out in the street with kids after making history-making basket catches on the biggest baseball stage of all, the World Series.    The other children probably found it boring.  That little black-haired girl absorbed all of it and baseball grabbed her by the soul...turns out, it never turned her a' loose.

     Later,you see,  a  pretty black-haired teenager walked across the street from her part-time job at Sears to watch games in the same old revered venue.   This time, though, she could sit where she chose and could probably afford to buy herself  a bag of peanuts or a cold Coca-Cola.  World War II started and her brother went off to war and got shot down by the Germans.  They finally found him in a German P.O.W. camp after being listed M.I.A. for 13 months.  I like to think that the only solace she found during such a terrifying ordeal was the afternoons spent in the old ballyard.  One could put aside your problems and the world's  problems when trying to guess what a pitcher had up his sleeve or hoping for a fly ball deep enough to score that runner on  third.

      The pretty black-haired teenager fell in love and was married when she was 19.  She gave birth to 4 children, and lost 3 others (2 to miscarriage, 1 was stillborn.)  Learning to live life as a mother and a wife is a growth one lives through, sometimes not noticing that it's taking chunks of  personality that make a woman an individual.  Moving from house to house, (each one a little bigger than the last)  watching her and her husband's parents age, some passing on, one moving in and becoming part of the household she worked to support. The husband's  job became a career as the municipality  for which he worked became a CITY instead of a TOWN.  She saw children grow and start driving and having cars of their own and start college and leave home, sometimes getting married, sometimes coming back home.  But in the midst of the chaos that is raising a family, one very important thing happened.

     In 1966 the Milwaukee Braves decided they wished to become the Atlanta Braves.  The black-haired lady now had a team of her own and could quit following the Dodgers.  Years earlier, she had listened to a thousand Brooklyn games on the radio with her father, long before they moved west (and became "a different sort of a team." as she put it.  Asked one time what that  meant she said "Brooklyn was a neighborhood, loyalty, the team belonged to the people.  But L.A.  Hmph!  Hollywood, stars, flash and glitz don't mix with baseball...")   She went to a lot of those games in the old Fulton County Stadium, her husband's career with the city affording her pretty good seats there in aisle 119, atop the home team's dugout. Most of it was pretty awful baseball but she never, ever gave up hope, enduring rain delays, extra innings and double-digit routs.  She'd never leave before her team had won or lost, unless Mother Nature made it impossible.  And when it was Mother's Day, her family left church very quickly (sometimes while they were still singing the final hymn!)  to get her to the stadium before first pitch.  She wasn't one to want flowers, brunch or frill of any kind.  A program, a bag of peanuts, her family around her, everyone in their seats on time was gift enough.

     As the pretty black-haired lady became a pretty gray-haired lady, she  lost a husband and was living in an empty nest and  walking with a cane.  Thank God for cable television and the chance to watch not only her boys, but also boys in other cities play her favorite game.  She developed quite an affinity for the Cubs, based mostly on her love for the character that called their games, the guy with huge glasses.  She took a trip to Wrigley Field once and later said the only thing she'd seen more beautiful was Venice, Italy.  I would imagine, if pressed, she'd admit to liking the 'friendly confines' even more than that jewel of Italy.

     As she grew older, mobility issues made it harder and harder to get her to baseball games.  Until one opportunity for very good tickets - "close enough to hear guys cuss!" as she exclaimed - presented itself and her extended family of children and childrens' spouses and children's children all came up with a plan to get her to those seats.  There were only 2 tickets so everyone couldn't go.  One would drive, one would walk her to the gate, one would get someone to get a wheelchair from stadium personnel, and finally one would walk her to her seat and watch the game with her.  After the game, reverse the process.  It would be worth the trouble.  When she got to her seat she started crying, saying she was sure she'd never watch another game in person.  Tears went away, though, when they sang the National Anthem and got down to business.

     As the bottom of the 4th started and the home team began it's second trip through it's lineup, trying to get that zero off the scoreboard, the gray-haired lady made a very bold proclamation to anyone who would listen.   "UH-OH!!! WE'RE ABOUT TO BEAT HIM UP!!"  (talking about the other pitcher.)   "Why?" she was asked.  "BECAUSE HE ISN'T CHANGING A THING HE DID THE FIRST TIME THROUGH THE LINEUP!!!  WATCH HIM, FAST BALL, BREAKING BALL, CHANGE SPEEDS, AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK HE'S PUTTING ONE UP IN THEIR EYES TO MAKE THEM CHASE IT!!!"  Suddenly, a dozen or so advance scouts for other teams in the surrounding  seats turned to see who it was making such declarations.  A few of them chuckled when they saw it was that gray-haired lady, leaning up in her seat, chin propped on her cane.  She wondered why there were staring...."Watch!  You'll see!"   By the time the inning had ended the home team no longer had a zero on the board.  There was a 4 there, courtesy of one solo home run, a walk, a single and a 3 run shot.  And in that moment the tutorials given her by an old black man 60-something years earlier paid off when a few of those scouts put down their clipboards and stopwatches and gave the gray haired lady a round of applause.  Once again, tears came to her eyes.  It's good to have some part of you that survives when all else falls prey to change.  I doubt, until that moment, the pretty little black-haired girl, the pretty black-haired teenager, the pretty black-haired lady or the pretty gray-haired lady ever realized it was something she should have been proud of, something that was HERS. 

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

Peggy Sr.

     We walked to the end of the hall, neither of us saying a word.  We'd just been down to her room, and my mother-in-law knew it was going to be the last time she could hold my Mama's hand, ask her how she was doing, brush her hair back off her forehead and give her a kiss on the cheek.  It was the last time she'd make her laugh by giving her a wink and a grin and asking her "does he belong to you?" pointing at me on the other side of the bed.  By this time all Mama  could do was just nod her head and chuckle when the woman I call "Peggy Sr." said "well, he's a pretty good fella'...I think we ought to keep him around." It was the last moment they shared together.
   
     Her daughter and I had already been married twelve years but it was there in that hospital at the end of that hall that I realized how much this woman loved me and how much I loved her.  She didn't say a word before she got on that elevator, she just  held my face in her hands and gave me a smile that said everything I needed to hear - "This is bad...this is sad.  but you're going to make it...'cause I'm right here."  I put my head on her shoulder, feeling like the gravity of this whole episode was knocking me to my knees.  But she was there to catch me.  My hands were still shaking....moments before I'd signed a DNR just like I always promised I would do when the time came.  But in that embrace there was a rub on my back and a kiss on my own cheek...and my hands quit shaking. She took her arms from around me and  put her hands right back on my face and stared hard into my eyes.  Again, without words, I knew what she was asking.  "I'll be ok," I said out loud.  "I'll be ok."    Later that afternoon Mama was moved into hospice care and the next morning she was gone.

     A couple of weeks later we were standing in their driveway, saying good-byes after a good meal and a relaxing evening together.  I got in my truck and rolled down my window, waiting on my wife to finish a chat with her dad.  Seeing an opportunity to speak to me privately she came over and leaned in my truck and said "I need to tell you something.  I would never, ever pretend to take the place of your mother.  But I want to make sure you know how much we both love you.   I know you miss her but you're not alone.  You've still got a mom when you need one."  I assured her I needed one most everyday and then I cried like a baby all the way home.

     Mother-in-laws have long been punchlines and cliches.  But the only thing you'll hear me saying about mine is that I thank God for her everyday.  I call her "Peggy Sr." and my bride "Peggy Jr." because they're birds of a feather.  (It's amazing the Good Lord could create two such beautiful women but even more amazing that they're both in my corner!)   Peggy Sr. spoils me rotten, she makes me laugh, she has the most extensive "Crimson Tide" wardrobe of anybody living east of Tuscaloosa.  She'll holler "Roll Tide" anywhere from the grocery store to church.   She makes the best deviled eggs on the planet and has a hat collection that would shame any of those women parading around Churchill Downs.  She loves gospel music and can sing it right well, too.  But the thing she does best is what she did there in that hallway at the hospital - look right into your soul with a mother's tender eyes and calm whatever storm she finds brewing.