My sister, Tracy, and I had a rambling telephone conversation on my way home from work last night after a long week. We compared notes on my mom, as we often do. Knowing that she remains the tie that binds us together would make her happy.
I had given Tracy and Alice my tickets the Belmont-MTSU basketball game on Monday night. I have great seats on the third row, almost dead center court, between the benches. The Curb Center is a great college basketball venue and Belmont has a very, very good men's basketball team. My friend and childhood neighbor, Scott Corley, is the athletic director. Grayson Murphy, a good friend of mine's son, is a redshirt freshman and starting point guard for the team. And I can walk to the games.
Tracy and I were lamenting how much mom would have loved going to Belmont basketball games with me. She was such a huge college basketball fan. So many of my early sports memories are of her taking me to Vanderbilt basketball games and living and dying with her as they won or lost. It was something we shared and those are memories I'll always treasure. I can easily see my mom transitioning from going to Vanderbilt basketball games - where she had season tickets for more than 40 years - to going to Belmont basketball games.
Scott Corley would have doted on her. She would have met Coach Byrd and become a huge fan. She would have loved watching Grayson Murphy play. She loved guards, especially point guards - shout out too her favorite point guard of all time, Kaitlyn Hearn (aka the Short Answer) - and she would have been so taken with the way Grayson plays the position and the game. She would have loved getting to know my friend Russ's mother-in-law, Connie, also a season ticket holder. Going to Belmont basketball games at the Curb Center would have been a bookend of sorts, something we shared. Again. It makes me terribly sad that we didn't get to do that together.
It also makes me sad that I never really got say goodbye to that version of my mom. I miss her terribly, all the time. It's like a dull ache in my heart that never really goes away. I compartmentalize, I smile for others, I immerse myself in my work, I find quiet time for myself to recharge my batteries and sometimes, when I'm alone, I cry. Not a lot, but sometimes.
As Tracy and I lamented our loss and, more importantly, my mom's loss, we reminisced about how much and how quickly things have changed for my mom since she moved into Maristone two years ago this month. In some ways, that seems like a lifetime ago and, in other ways, it seems like yesterday. That's another post for another day, though.
"It's hard to say goodbye twice, isn't it?" I quietly said to Tracy, as I sat in the dark, in my Yukon, driving to J.P.'s basketball practice.
Like magic and through the miracle of modern technology, she answered through the speakers in my Yukon, as if she was sitting right beside me.
"It sure is." Then, she sighed and we were quiet for a moment.
It's hard to say goodbye twice.
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