Imagine you're 17 again. Instead this time around, it's 1973. You're 5'11", a buck-60--a sturdy body on your high school football team in that era. Your easy demeanor and cloud-white smile buckle the knees of female classmates you don't even know. You're not the star, but you circle in relatively close orbit. You're ready to play tonight.
Then, on one play, it's over--the game, your body, your dreams. You stumble towards the ground on a routine tackle at the line of scrimmage. On the way down, an opponent's knee clips your chin, slamming your head in reverse, severing all the vital connections your spine had with your body below the neck. You lay still, but not by choice. A coach, maybe a ref or a teammate: they all say it'll be ok. You just got your bell rung. Give it a minute; you'll be back on your feet.
You never return to your feet. The rest of your days--which doctors across the state will predict to be small in number, but in fact will span some 40 years--are spent horizontally, pissing through a tube, your mom feeding you meals and changing your clothes as she ceases to exist for anything except your total care. Your father--your mother's second husband after being widowed before you were born--and half-brother die from emphysema and cancer. Instead of college, you read newspapers and watch Jeopardy. Friends visit at first, but the visits temper, at least until later in your life, when they realize you're still alive. Some gather the stones to come back again. They're uncomfortable, unsure how to describe how good their lives have been while you never left this room that looks exactly like it did in high school. They have families, careers, the ability to walk. You grew a mustache and drink from a straw. You ask them about everything.
Because you're not bitter. Because while it looks like you've been forsaken by the god your mother prays to daily and sits with weekly, he has blessed you with a parent others can't even dream of. A mother whose love is so devout, and so true, that she'll wipe your adult ass every time you shit your pants. Kiss your forehead and tell you she's proud of you. A mother whose days are built upon your unbroken smile--and whose pride for you, despite your shocking limitations, never nears faltering. A mother who never considers giving up. All she asks in return--from God, not from you--for total dedication to you both, for which she regrets not a second, is that her life outlasts yours by a single day. She wants nothing more than to be the last person you need.
You finally succumb to an infection at a specialty care facility, having bested countless bladder stone and kidney aggravations over the years. Your mom survives you--by more than a day, but not by much. She's pushing 90 now. She wanders the house at night. Old eyes failing, her ears hear sounds of a past life--one where your feet touched the floor. But her prayers were answered. She was there for you until the end, and then she was called home, hopefully to join you in a place where your family's Earthly suffering eased. Because to a merciful god, and most certainly a Buddha, you've earned it.
That's the approximate story of John McClamrock from Texas, called "Still Life," told by Skip Hollandsworth in the May 2009 issue of the Texas Monthly. Peter Gammons selected it to be in the 2010 Best American Sports Writing, a book he guest edited.
I read a lot--books, the Internet, magazines. This knocked me on my ass. It especially knocked my friend Ruben on his ass; he's played full-time caretaker to his recovering mother for the last year plus.
I can’t recall any piece where unconditional love was less a cliché and more a matter of fact. Hollandsworth carried me to that Dallas home, in to Johnny’s room, down the hall from where his mother Ann’s prayer cards lay beside her bed. As age advanced, I watched her ride that stationary bike and lap the block with power-walk strides. Saw Johnny’s room remain untouched for 40 years. Felt his weight as Ann rolled him over to stymie bedsores. Witnessed two lives of struggle conclude with incomparable grace.
The McClamrock's story involves sports only at its periphery, where the lone significance of football was how one moment fundamentally altered the way the family lived. Hollandsworth tells the tale in a way that made me feel not sorrow, but rather grateful for the blessings in my life, for my mother's greatness, and reminded me that lousy circumstances don't have to hatch a lousy perspective. He showed the amazing capacity mothers have for self-sacrifice. If anyone required a spirit of such immeasurable caliber as Ann McClamrock, it was her son John.
Mothers like Ann do well to show us that, as she once told someone, "we can either act hopeless or we can make the best out of the life we have been given."
What better time to remember then Mother's Day weekend?
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