“What?” I said, though certain I had heard him correctly.
“I don’t want to play football anymore. These people . . . they don’t care about me, Dad. I’m just a number to them.”
And there it was. As was so often the case, Beau had reached his own conclusion, seemingly without my help. I became a parent thinking of all the things I would teach my son and my daughter. I never realized how much I would learn from them. I knew then my son would never be a piece of meat. He would never be a number.
Because that was my son.
He was not me.
He was a better version of me.
“Why are we down here then?” I asked, not because I was bitter about the time spent or the cost. I wanted to hear my son’s explanation, his rationale. “Why did we come down for these camps?”
He set his Dodger Dog in his lap, which was when I knew things were serious.
“I thought I wanted to play, you know, for Chris—because he and I talked about it so much. But Chris would be the first person to tell me to play for myself or don’t play at all. Besides, it won’t be the same without him. I won’t be making plays behind him.”
I smiled. William had been right. Beau had to have this experience to truly understand Chris would not be with him.
“Sometimes I think I was supposed to be in the car that night,” Beau said, tears rolling down his cheeks from behind his sunglasses.
“It wasn’t God’s—”
“Don’t,” Beau said softly. “Don’t tell me God has a reason for everything; there’s no reason for someone so young to die. Chris was only eighteen. He had his whole life ahead of him.”
I took a breath and thought again of William’s journal. “Did I tell you about the summer before I went to college?”
Beau shook his head.
I told Beau about William and Todd, what they had been through and how neither believed in God. “They said they stopped believing because when they needed God, he wasn’t there.”
“I feel that way now,” Beau said, wiping his tears.
“I know,” I said. “But I do believe. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I was there that moment you were born, and the moment your sister was born. So I know, firsthand, there has to be a God to make something so beautiful as you and your sister, to give me and your mother such incredibly precious gifts.” I paused to let that sink in. “Every time someone so young dies, Beau, like Chris, it’s a shock because it’s not just a loss of life, it’s a loss of potential—what that life could have been. The death of someone so young shatters the illusion we all have at eighteen—the illusion that we’re immortal, that we’re never going to grow old, that we’re never going to die.”
“That’s what I thought,” Beau said. “I thought Chris and I would go to the same college, work and live near each other our whole lives, that our children would play sports together. I just never thought he wouldn’t be part of my life.”
“I know,” I said. “But we don’t know God’s ways. Maybe, perhaps, God spared you a greater tragedy down the road. I’m not making excuses. I’m just saying, we don’t know.” I thought of something else, something my older sister had once said. “You know, I used to complain about all my ailments, all my worn-out joints, until one day, your auntie Susie said to me, ‘Well, the alternative to growing old is a lot worse, so count your blessings that you’re old enough to have worn out a knee or a hip or a shoulder.’ Growing old is a privilege, Beau, not a right. I thank God every day that I wake up. I thank him every day for your mom, for you, and for Mary Beth.”
“It doesn’t bring Chris back,” Beau said.
“No. It doesn’t. That’s the hardest part about death. It’s permanent. It’s final. But Chris will not have died for nothing if you learn just one thing from his death, if you learn that life is fragile at any age, and that every day is a gift. His death won’t be for nothing if you learn to celebrate each morning that you wake, take a breath, and realize you’re still alive and the day is filled with endless potential.”
Beau was silent for a moment. His hot dog sat in the paper tray in his lap, partially uneaten. After a minute he said, “That’s why I have to go away. To grow up. You know that, right?”
“Is that what these camps are about?” I asked.
“I’m not running away from Chris’s death, Dad, but I need to go away for a while and find myself. I can’t do it at home. It’s nothing against you and Mom; you’ve always given me everything I needed to succeed, but now I have to succeed on my own, without you, without Chris, without everything I need. I have to find out if I can stand on my own two feet.”