Ahhh...isn't that sweet...the Saints are heading to the Super Bowl....
Let's wipe away the cyber tears and slow down, not stop or get off...just slow down, the Saints bandwagon for a few minutes. Let's reign in them horses....
If I lost a drop of blood for every time I heard someone say, "Well, the city of New Orleans deserves it," or anything close to it, I would be a typing raisin.
New Orleans deserves it?
Why?
Because of Katrina? If it is for another reason, like...I don't know...they were a hell of a team this year or won the NFC Championship game, then maybe I would agree. But no...that isn't the reason offered...it so often has to do with Katrina.
How does Katrina have anything at all to do with football? Did the Saints save thousands of lives with floating islands made of footballs? Did the team drop everything and swim off to help the poor folks make it out? Did some fat-ass lineman empty his fridge and have the contents air-dropped for the people without food?
If N.O. deserves to go to Super Bowl because of Katrina...don't the NY teams deserve something for 9-11? What did Seattle deserve for Mt St. Helen's? What about the Indonesian soccer team...shouldn't they deserve to win the World Cup for next thousand years or so? What about Haiti? What do they get? Should they be in the Pan-American World Series for the next decade, at least?
What about SLC? We have loads and loads of mormons. What do the rest of us get for having to deal with that?!
Oklahoma City has pretty bad ice storms...should the Thunder be in the Conference Finals for a couple of years or just a good showing in the playoffs? Did the Lakers win the NBA Championship last year because of all the wildfires?
But, if that's how it works...then the reverse should apply...
If a team wins titles and nothing bad has happened to the city, we can say with a straight face, "Well, the 49'ers won all those titles. They deserved that quake."
You see how silly this can get?
How about we leave football, the game, as football...the game. Let's not make it into some sort of reward system for a natural disaster.
With that said...Colts 34-Saints 20
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The tears in my father's eyes...
Eight hours after we had gotten the horrible news...
My father was looking at a picture of his family. It had him, his two brothers, two sisters, and both his parents...over half of them gone. If a similar photo were to be taken today...there would be more empty space than people filling it.
He didn't notice I was watching him.
He didn't see my tear edging out, mirroring the one which had just fallen from him.
He didn't know that his private moment of pain was something I will remember for the rest of my life.
I have no idea what he was thinking and it seemed almost obscene to even ask or interfere with his thoughts. He was opening some oh-so private mental scrap book and flipping through its pages. He was reliving things which, even with his gift for story-telling, would only be stories to me and my brothers...to him, they were life.
My uncle Tim's death came as suddenly as anything can. Days after the passing of my grandmother, but before her funeral...he died.
Two funerals had to be planned in different states.
I could see a pain, an ache, in my father I had never seen before. It was a hurt so brutish, a lifetime of tears would only scratch the surface. It made me wonder how the last surviving person of a family line must feel...how alone. Tim Newberry was like an older brother to me, but he really was a brother to my father...I cannot begin to comprehend the true sorrow.
As the days go by, things will get easier for my dad. Time can do many things, but contrary to what most people say, it does not heal pain. If someone loses an arm, after years of work, they can manage to do most tasks effectively enough...but, they are still missing an arm. It is the same with death.
It may take months or years, but people learn to live. However, the loved-one is gone. There is no coming back, no prosthetic, which will replace the lost person...they are nothing more than a collection of images stored in a mental scrap book.
In his dueling hours of grief, my brothers and I stood at the side of our father and greeted it as an honor.
It is my hope...no...it is my prayer, that we did some good.
He is flying home, even as I write. I pray he can recover from this. I pray he will be able to relax and get some rest. I pray he can find some reason to smile, laugh. I pray...there will be no more tears in my father's eyes.
My father was looking at a picture of his family. It had him, his two brothers, two sisters, and both his parents...over half of them gone. If a similar photo were to be taken today...there would be more empty space than people filling it.
He didn't notice I was watching him.
He didn't see my tear edging out, mirroring the one which had just fallen from him.
He didn't know that his private moment of pain was something I will remember for the rest of my life.
I have no idea what he was thinking and it seemed almost obscene to even ask or interfere with his thoughts. He was opening some oh-so private mental scrap book and flipping through its pages. He was reliving things which, even with his gift for story-telling, would only be stories to me and my brothers...to him, they were life.
My uncle Tim's death came as suddenly as anything can. Days after the passing of my grandmother, but before her funeral...he died.
Two funerals had to be planned in different states.
I could see a pain, an ache, in my father I had never seen before. It was a hurt so brutish, a lifetime of tears would only scratch the surface. It made me wonder how the last surviving person of a family line must feel...how alone. Tim Newberry was like an older brother to me, but he really was a brother to my father...I cannot begin to comprehend the true sorrow.
As the days go by, things will get easier for my dad. Time can do many things, but contrary to what most people say, it does not heal pain. If someone loses an arm, after years of work, they can manage to do most tasks effectively enough...but, they are still missing an arm. It is the same with death.
It may take months or years, but people learn to live. However, the loved-one is gone. There is no coming back, no prosthetic, which will replace the lost person...they are nothing more than a collection of images stored in a mental scrap book.
In his dueling hours of grief, my brothers and I stood at the side of our father and greeted it as an honor.
It is my hope...no...it is my prayer, that we did some good.
He is flying home, even as I write. I pray he can recover from this. I pray he will be able to relax and get some rest. I pray he can find some reason to smile, laugh. I pray...there will be no more tears in my father's eyes.
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