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.
