I took my terminally ill 10-year-old son to a football game as his final wish — then we appeared...

 

I Took My Terminally Ill 10-Year-Old Son to a Football Game as His Final Wish – Then We Appeared on the Stadium’s Big Screen, and the Announcer Said, ‘There’s Something You Don’t Know About This Trip’

“Mom, LOOK!”

Ethan nearly knocked over his drink as he pointed toward the enormous screen above the football field.

There we were.

Chris on one side of him, me on the other, and our ten-year-old son in the middle wearing his blue jersey and smiling so widely that, for one beautiful second, he looked like every other kid in the stadium.

I lifted my hand toward the camera.

Chris raised both arms.

Ethan shouted, “WE’RE FAMOUS!”

The people around us laughed.

I reached for my phone automatically.

Then the announcer’s voice filled the stadium.

“Ethan, we’re very happy you’re here today. But there’s something about your visit you don’t know.”

Ethan stopped bouncing.

Chris looked at me.

I looked at him.

Neither of us had any idea what was happening.

“All three of you,” the announcer continued, “turn around.”

Ethan grabbed my hand.

“What is it, Mom?”

“I don’t know, Captain.”

We turned.

A man was coming down the stadium steps.

Chris froze.

“Leo?”

Behind him came Ray from the hospital carrying Ethan’s battered plastic tabletop football game. One of Ethan’s nurses followed, along with Cody, another patient from his floor, and Cody’s mother.

Ethan stared at them.

“No way.”

Ray lifted the little plastic field over his head.

Ethan immediately started laughing.

“You brought that thing?”

Ray grinned.

“Commissioner never abandons his league.”

“Coach Ray,” Ethan corrected.

“Commissioner.”

“You cheat.”

The crowd around us laughed, but I could barely hear them.

Three months earlier, football had still been ordinary in our house.

Sunday meant Chris shouting at the television, Ethan correcting everything he said, and me insisting I didn’t care about football while somehow yelling louder than both of them whenever a referee made a call I disliked.

Then Ethan’s cancer stopped responding to treatment.

His doctor asked Chris and me to step into the hallway one afternoon.

I remember staring at the little football sticker Ethan had taped to his hospital door while the doctor spoke.

“The treatment isn’t working.”

Chris immediately started asking questions.

Another trial?

Different medication?

Another hospital?

I heard only one sentence clearly.

“We may have much less time than we hoped.”

When we returned to Ethan’s room, a football game was playing.

Their team scored.

Chris jumped out of his chair.

“YES!”

Ethan laughed.

Chris immediately stopped celebrating.

“You okay, Captain?”

Ethan looked at him strangely.

“Dad, I laughed.”

“I know.”

“I’m allowed to.”

Chris forced a smile.

“Of course.”

I took a picture.

After that, I took pictures of everything.

Ethan eating cereal.

Ethan sleeping.

Ethan making disgusted faces at hospital food.

Ethan arguing football statistics with his father.

I told myself I was preserving memories.

I didn’t realize Ethan had noticed what we were doing.

A few days later, someone from a wish organization visited him.

“If you could do anything,” she asked, “what would you choose?”

Ethan didn’t hesitate.

“A real football game.”

Then he pointed at us.

“With Mom and Dad.”

The organization arranged everything.

Accessible seats.

Transportation.

Medical accommodations.

We thought that was the whole wish.

We were wrong.

On game day, Ethan stopped the moment we entered the stadium.

Thousands of voices echoed around us. Music blasted from the speakers. Fans poured through the corridors.

Chris bent toward him.

“Too much?”

Ethan shook his head.

“It’s awesome.”

Then he saw the field.

For months, his world had been hospital rooms, treatment schedules and quiet trips home.

Now there was green grass stretching in front of him and thousands of people screaming over something that had nothing to do with illness.

He loved every second.

He yelled.

He laughed.

He ate half a pretzel and stole Chris’s hot dog after saying he wasn’t hungry.

And I photographed everything.

At one point, Chris leaned over.

“You tired?”

“No.”

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Need water?”

“Dad.”

“What?”

“Watch the game.”

Chris laughed.

“I am.”

Ethan shook his head.

“No. You’re watching me watch it.”

Chris stopped smiling.

Ethan simply turned back toward the field.

Then came halftime.

The giant screen found us.

The announcement.

And now Ray was standing beside our seats with Ethan’s hospital football game.

The announcer explained that Ethan had made one extra request without telling us.

If this was going to be his football day, he wanted his “hospital league” included somehow.

That league consisted of anyone who entered Ethan’s hospital room long enough to be assigned one of the cheap plastic players.

He had one rule.

Everybody played.

The announcer said those words aloud.

“Everybody plays.”

The stadium applauded.

Ethan hid his face.

“I’m never going back to the hospital.”

His nurse laughed.

“You have an appointment Tuesday.”

“Cancel it.”

A few minutes later, stadium staff offered Ethan a quieter room to rest.

He was exhausted, so we followed.

Ray put the plastic field on a table.

One player immediately fell over.

“Cheap equipment,” Ray muttered.

“Bad coaching,” Ethan replied.

Everyone laughed.

Then Ray glanced at Ethan.

Something passed between them.

“Come on,” he told the others. “Captain needs a family meeting.”

They left.

Leo was last.

Chris looked uncomfortable when he saw him.

Months earlier, Leo’s son had been receiving treatment on Ethan’s floor.

One afternoon, Leo’s family received wonderful news.

His son’s treatment was working.

Leo laughed in the hallway and started crying from relief.

Chris had just learned that another treatment had failed for Ethan.

He snapped at Leo.

“Could you celebrate somewhere else?”

Chris regretted it almost immediately, but he never apologized.

The next day, Leo came into Ethan’s room, sat down at the plastic football game and challenged him.

Ethan beat him badly.

Leo kept coming back.

Now, before leaving the family room, Leo gave Chris a small nod.

The door closed.

Only the three of us remained.

Chris looked at Ethan.

“Okay, Captain. What was all that?”

Ethan shrugged.

“Nothing.”

“Ray traveled across town carrying a broken plastic football field.”

“They’re players.”

“Fine. Professional athletes.”

Ethan smiled slightly.

I sat beside him.

“Why did you want everyone here?”

His smile disappeared.

He picked at a loose thread on his jersey.

Finally, he said, “Because they act normal around me.”

Chris frowned.

“We act normal.”

Ethan looked at him.

“Dad, you pause football games to ask if I’m tired.”

Chris opened his mouth.

Ethan turned toward me.

“And Mom takes pictures of me eating cereal.”

I slowly lowered the phone still sitting in my hand.

He continued.

“You saved my hospital bracelet.”

“That was—”

“Mom.”

I stopped.

Ethan looked down at the little football field.

“Football used to just be football.”

Chris leaned forward.

“What do you mean?”

“You used to yell at the TV because you were mad at the game. Now you yell and then look at me.”

Chris became very still.

“And Mom used to yell at referees.”

“Bad referees.”

“All referees.”

Despite myself, I smiled.

Then Ethan said something that wiped the smile away.

“That’s why I picked this.”

I stared at him.

“I wanted you guys to have fun with me.”

His voice cracked slightly.

“Everybody acts like everything has to be important now because I’m going to die.”

My chest tightened.

Ethan looked at my phone.

“Sometimes I just want stuff to be stuff.”

I placed the phone facedown.

Chris covered Ethan’s hand with his.

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

Ethan shrugged.

“I know you’re sad.”

Chris nodded.

“I am.”

“I’m sad too.”

Chris swallowed.

Then he said, “But you’re still here. And I think I forgot that watching every second isn’t the same as actually being in it with you.”

Ethan looked up.

“So I’m right?”

Chris sighed.

“Absolutely not.”

Ethan laughed.

“Too late.”

A knock came at the door.

Leo stood there.

Chris rose slowly.

For a moment neither man spoke.

Then Chris asked, “How’s your son?”

Leo smiled.

“Home. Driving his mother crazy.”

Chris nodded.

“That’s good.”

And for once, he allowed someone else’s good news to simply be good news.

A little later, I asked Ethan if he wanted to leave.

He glanced toward the stadium.

“Ten more minutes.”

Chris smiled.

“Ten.”

We returned to our seats.

No camera found us again.

No celebrity came over.

Nobody gave Ethan a signed football.

The game simply continued.

Exactly what he wanted.

Chris complained about a bad play.

Ethan told him he knew nothing about football.

Then a referee threw a flag.

“Oh, COME ON!” I shouted.

Ethan burst out laughing.

“Mom, you don’t even know what happened!”

“I know injustice when I see it.”

My hand moved instinctively toward my phone.

Then I stopped.

Ethan noticed.

“You’re not taking a picture?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I looked at him.

“Because I’m watching.”

He smiled.

Late in the fourth quarter, our team scored.

The entire stadium erupted.

Chris jumped up screaming.

I screamed too.

Ethan grabbed one of my hands and one of his father’s and laughed so hard he could barely breathe.

The little plastic football game slipped sideways.

One of the players fell underneath my seat.

Normally, I would have immediately bent down to retrieve it.

Instead, I stayed where I was.

Chris was shouting.

Ethan was laughing.

Thousands of people were on their feet.

And for once, I didn’t need to save the moment.

I only needed to live inside it.

After the cheering finally settled, Ethan looked down.

“Mom! My player.”

I reached underneath the seat and found the tiny plastic figure.

He snapped it back onto the field.

“Everybody plays,” he said.

Then he looked toward the real field again.

So did Chris.

So did I.

Ethan lived another four months.

There were difficult days after that game, but there were ordinary ones too.

We watched football without stopping every few minutes to ask how he felt.

We ate terrible hospital food and complained about it.

Chris and Ethan argued statistics.

I continued yelling at referees.

And yes, I still took photographs.

Just fewer of them.

When Ethan died, that plastic football game came home with us.

For a long time, Chris and I could not touch it.

Then, on the first Sunday of the next football season, Chris placed it on the coffee table.

The television was on.

Our team was losing badly.

A referee made a call I hated.

Without thinking, I shouted, “Are you kidding me?”

Chris looked at me.

For a second, we both froze.

Then he laughed.

I laughed too.

It hurt.

But it also felt exactly right.

Chris picked up one of the plastic players and placed it upright.

“Captain would say you still don’t know the rules.”

“He was wrong.”

“He was never wrong about football.”

I looked at the empty spot between us on the couch.

Ethan was gone.

There was no pretending otherwise.

But the lesson he gave us in that stadium remained.

Love was not only preserving someone because you were afraid of losing them.

Sometimes love was putting down the camera.

Sometimes it was yelling at a television.

Sometimes it was allowing an ordinary afternoon to remain ordinary.

And sometimes the best way to remember someone was not to spend every moment looking backward.

It was to keep playing.

Because Ethan had been right from the beginning.

Everybody plays.