2004-03-23 - 11:43 p.m.
QUESTION #1
I'd like to let it be known that I don't really want to answer ANY of these terribly invasive questions, thank you. But I will pick and choose as wisely as possible.
So... when was the last time I cried? I will answer this one because it seems timely with the current goings-ons in the world. The last time I remember crying was after Kansas lost the national championship game to Syracuse last year.
That probably sounds silly, but I will try to explain. It wasn't really because they lost, it was because of Charity's dad, who unfortunately passed a way just over a year ago. And he was a huge fan of Kansas basketball.
He really loved the whole March Madness stuff. There were all sorts of times when we were kids that I can remember going to her house after school and her dad was there, having left work early so he could come home and watch the games. I always thought that was pretty funny.
When we were juniors in high school, we skipped out around 1:30 one lovely March afternoon and we went back to her house to get something to drink or whatever, because we'd knew her house would be empty. And we were barely there for 2 minutes before her dad came barging in the back door, rushing off to the TV to turn a game on.
Then during a commercial he finally asked us why we weren't in school, but he didn't really care that we'd left. And we ended up watching most of the game with him. I'm sure I haven't done this story justice at all, but that day is one of my favorite memories of him.
A lot of my memories of what happened around this time last year, though, are really blurry. Which is kind of a strange feeling. I remember that Charity was out of the house and her mom called. And when I picked up the phone and said hello, she asked if Jake was there. And I thought that was so strange because, first, she always knows it's me. A male voice answers the phone, who else would it be?
I don't remember her telling me what had happened, and I don't remember ending the conversation and hanging up. I don't remember how long it took before Charity came home, but I remember crying before I told her. Then the next few days after that are pretty much a blank.
But somewhere along the line while we were back at home with our families, I realized that the basketball tournament games were on. I'm not really sure what round it was in when I started watching Kansas play, but I remember them beating Duke. Then they beat Arizona, who I think was the #1 team in the country. And then they got to the Final Four, which is a pretty big deal.
I'd watched a few of the games by myself, but when the Final Four games started, Charity and her little brother and her mom all watched it with me. And Kansas made it to the championship game and I think they only lost by 3 points, missing a shot to tie it up at the buzzer. And we were all kinda bummed and we started cleaning up, and the room emptied out and I just started to cry.
I don't think I cried during the whole period of the funeral and everything, because I was more focused on Charity and her mom and what they needed than anything else. So I suppose I was due for it, and like I said, it wasn't that they lost the game. It was more that I know her dad would have loved watching them make it that far, and I just felt sad that he wasn't there to see it.
But it was really good for her family to do something fun as a group, and that’s kinda when things started getting back to normal, or as close to normal as it could get. I didn’t know it at the time, but Charity’s mom actually wrote a letter to the school and kinda explained what I just did about her husband being a big fan of the team. And even though they lost, she wanted to let them know how watching them had been a really nice time for the family in the wake of what had happened.
I didn’t know she wrote the letter, but a week or so later she got a letter back from somebody high up at the school. I want to say the athletic director, but I think he was fired shortly after the season ended, so I dunno if his replacement wrote it or who it was. And there was a signed picture of the team along with it. An actual picture with signatures on it, not one of those pre-fab deals where the signatures are printed on.
And about two weeks after that, she got a letter from Roy Williams, who by that time had left to go coach at North Carolina. I don’t know if he got the letter before he left, or if someone passed it along to him, but he wrote her a really nice letter. Charity’s brother has that team picture in his room, and he’s starting to get into basketball now as he enters his early high school years. Maybe he’ll play at Kansas. That would be pretty neat.
Anyway, that’s the answer to that question. This was a lot harder to write than I thought it'd be, so thanks a bunch for making me do it. Jeez.
