Please forgive me for using this site the last couple of days to air my own struggles with loss. I should be telling you about my visit with my granddaughters, Maggie and Riley, who are four years old and two. Or perhaps talk about two more of my granddaughters, Rebecca and Frannie, who spent time patiently teaching me how to use a Nintendo Switch and play a Super Mario Bros. game.
That’s the funny thing about life; it demands your attention and often refuses to let you dwell on any one thing for too long. Little girls and much older teenagers have a gravitational pull, forcing me out of a funk quicker than a New York minute. They don’t just offer a distraction; they offer a mandatory return to the present moment. This is the lesson: we aren’t obligated to dwell on our losses, not because they don’t matter, but because the next game, the next new season, is always right around the corner.
We find that we appreciate the good times more, the laughter of a four-year-old, the focus required to jump a Super Mario chasm, precisely because we have just dealt with the bad. Football taught me that the season ends for the champion and the bottom of the pack alike. The final whistle blows on every victory and every defeat, and a new year’s schedule is immediately drawn up. In the same way, the season of grief has its final gun, giving way to the season of living. Our only true focus is on the kickoff of the game we are in right now.
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