Mary visited me again.
This inspirational card has floated around our lives for more than a decade. I don’t know where Mary found it and I never paid much attention to it on our dresser or her nightstand.
Having no clear connection to our life together, I was tempted to toss it in my efforts to make room in our lives. Physical health and wellbeing has been paramount in our family transformation and I didn’t think I needed a reminder. I checked myself on how easily bad habits form and old patterns return and placed the card between our kitchen and dining room.
A day or so earlier, I was at Lanikai Wellness Studio for a yoga class and purchased a deck of cards based on Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I have a long to-read list and thought this would be a good way to bring Ruiz’s wisdom into my life. I also hoped they would provide material for a new blog series.
I sat down this morning to flip through the cards for the first time. This same card was in the first ten I read. We didn’t own the book. We never discussed Ruiz. I didn’t discover him until after Mary passed and there’s no indication of his name or the book title on the cards.
This is my first real holiday season alone. A friend buoyed me through my first Christmas as a widower, but that friendship has been lost. As much as I trust where I am and the good things that are to come, the loneliness is weighing on me.
This week I came home from a brutal two hours of soccer. I was hammered in goal and on the field, nothing seemed to work in the back-to-back games. I was wiped out emotionally and physically. I was useless to my sons as they warmed up leftovers and served themselves dinner. I wondered what I was doing wrong, how I got to this place.
I had a dream that night that Mary had been in the stands watching our boys and watching me play. I ran over to the edge of the field to ask for help with something small. It startled me and I woke angry. I envisioned the stands again and I took her away. It wasn’t like a dream. I can see the empty spot at the end of the metal bench now. I could have told her how much I loved her, how blessed I am to have had her, how important she was, and is, to me, or I could have just smiled and enjoyed a moment seeing her again. But I erased her. I was angry at myself for a foolish fantasy.
So she’s back this morning telling me to take care of my body. She always protected soccer for me. She would come home from a long day of work, start making dinner, and send me out the door, no matter if the boys were being disagreeable or impatient, or if coats were still on the floor from our afternoon adventures. She was always there later to hear about my frustrations and successes on the field. I can hear her drowsy, mumbled, “I’m listening,” as she fought off sleep after a late game. She was listening, she was always present. She was so good at being present that she still manages it from time to time.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason
Mary didn’t have a whole lot of incentive to cultivate my love of the game. She came from a football coach dad and soccer got me into trouble while we were dating. We played and celebrated hard in those days and after being banned from a bar or two, a possible assault, and having a teammate throw up on her I don’t know how Mary thought soccer should stay in our lives. Again, her wisdom and patience saved me. Leading Classics II has been the greatest experience outside blood family I’ve had over the last ten years. They’ve become family. And not only these great folks, but the other teams I’ve been blessed to play with, the charity tournaments, the pickups, the opponents, and the other leaders I’ve gotten to watch and learn from, our soccer family is enormous and generous. From delivered meals, donations to the boys’ 