In Memoriam

Sometimes blog posts write themselves.

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As a life-long hockey fan, I've become very fond of John Buccigross and his weekly column on ESPN.com. Bucci's fair, insightful, funny, and it's pretty cool to see a Sportscenter anchor write from the heart about his passion, the greatest game on earth.

This season, he began each column with an excerpt from Jack Falla's Home Ice. It was a tribute to Falla, a man I'll admit I had never heard of but have quickly come to respect, who passed away in September. Falla was a sportswriter, a communications professor at Boston University, and a lifelong hockey enthusiast--this Globe article calls him a "hockey expert," which seems fitting.

Home Ice is a book about the allure of the backyard rink--including his own, The Bacon Street Omni--and all the memories and life lessons that it can teach. I bought the book--it's another one sitting in/on the pile--but I've yet to read it. I have, however, grown to look forward with great anticipation towards each week's tribute/excerpt.

This week's column contained, as the NHL season comes to a close and the playoffs begin (the Rangers are in, but how long will they remain there?), the last Falla tribute.

As I write this, there's a lump in my throat, something Danielle would call The G-Factor. It stems from the phrase "googie factor," which is defined as: Male sobbing and tear-wiping, induced by emotional movie scenes (i.e., the I coulda been a contender scene in On The Waterfront), emotional commercials or specials (usually sports-related, i.e. those Sportscenter Make-A-Wish specials), and emotional sports moments in general (i.e., Jason McElwain, the basketball team manager, also autistic, who scored 20 points in 4 minutes, anything involving Mark Messier, Sam Cohen's "The waiting is over! The New York Rangers are the Stanley Cup Champions! And this one will last a lifetime!" call, Jim Abbott's no-hitter, any Yankees World Series clinching win--well, you get the picture).

The tribute on its own was stirring, and indicative of what drew and continues to draw people to Falla's writing. But after learning of the passing of a friend's father this morning, and still thinking about the passing of another friend about a month ago, it hit me even harder. I'll share it with you now:

As I look in our guestbook, I see that I have taken the final skate in three of the six seasons we've been keeping that record. Twice by myself. Once with Barbara. And all three times, I knew intuitively that it would be the final skate. And even when I wasn't the last skater off the ice in a given season, I still knew when I was taking my own last skate, and on those days, I stayed out longer and skated harder. Of course, I didn't skate any better, I just did what I've tried to do ever since I took those first shuffling strides with my mother -- skate as well as I can. Because life is different from a skating season, and in life, you never know which skate will be your last. Only that one of them will be.

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Sometimes we say things like, "Sometimes blog posts write themselves."

What I'm starting to realize is that it's possible that, sometimes, it's us receiving just a small amount of help from somewhere--out there--to help give us that extra boost we all need sometimes. To help us get by, get through, keep moving.

And we just don't know it.


JS