“Mom! LOOK!”
Ethan nearly knocked over his drink as he pointed toward the enormous screen above the field.
Our 10-year-old son’s final wish was simple: one real football game with Mom and Dad.
I looked up.
There we were.
My husband, Chris, sat on one side of Ethan while I sat on the other. Ethan was between us in his blue team jersey, grinning so widely that, for one wonderful second, he looked like any other 10-year-old boy in the stadium.
I waved.
Chris raised both hands.
Ethan shouted, “WE’RE FAMOUS!”
People nearby laughed and waved toward the camera.
I’d already taken more photos that afternoon than I could count, but I reached for my phone again.
Then the stadium announcer spoke.
“Ethan, we’re very happy you’re here with us today.”
My son stopped bouncing.
His face filled the giant screen.
The announcer continued, “But there’s something you don’t know about this trip.”
I glanced at Chris.
He looked just as confused as I was.
“All three of you,” the announcer said, “please turn around and look behind you.”
Everyone around us began twisting in their seats.
Ethan grabbed my hand.
“What is it, Mom?”
“I don’t know, Captain.”
We turned.
A man was walking down the stadium steps.
Chris stared.
The color drained from his face.
“Leo?”
Behind Leo came Ray from the hospital, carrying Ethan’s battered plastic tabletop football game beneath one arm.
A nurse from Ethan’s floor followed with Cody and his mother.
Ethan’s mouth dropped open.
“No way.”
I watched him. Whatever he’d imagined when the announcer told us to turn around, it clearly wasn’t this.
Then Ray raised the battered tabletop game, and Ethan started laughing.
Three months earlier, football had still been something ordinary in our house.
Sunday afternoons meant Chris yelling at the television, Ethan correcting him, and me pretending I didn’t care while complaining louder than both of them whenever I thought a referee had missed something.
“Mom,” Ethan once told me, laughing, “you don’t even know the rules.”
“I know cheating when I see it.”
Chris nearly choked on his chips.
Then Ethan’s cancer stopped responding to treatment.
One afternoon, his doctor asked Chris and me to step outside his hospital room.
I remember staring at the tiny cartoon football Ethan had taped to his door while the doctor talked.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said. “The treatment isn’t working the way we’d hoped.”
Chris asked every question.
Was there another trial?
Another medication?
Another hospital?
But I couldn’t move past one sentence.
“We may be looking at much less time than we’d hoped.”
When we went back into Ethan’s room, a football game was playing on television.
Chris sat beside him.
Their team scored.
For one second, Chris shot out of his chair.
“YES!”
Ethan burst out laughing.
Chris immediately leaned toward him.
“You okay, Captain?”
Ethan’s smile faded slightly.
“Dad, I laughed.”
“I know.”
“I’m allowed.”
Chris leaned back.
“Of course you are.”
I raised my phone.
Click.
Ethan looked at me.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
But after that, almost everything became something I felt compelled to save.
Ethan eating cereal.
Sleeping with one sock on.
The disgusted face he made at hospital gelatin.
The hours he spent arguing football statistics with Chris.
Photos.
Short videos.
Voice recordings.
I told myself I was collecting our life.
I didn’t realize Ethan had noticed.
