Fall and Football, Love and Bill

It is now that time of year that I love, full of those moments I crave when summer’s rank humidity or winter’s numbing cold get to be a bit much. This is the time of sweatshirts, jackets optional, of toasting your toes near a space heater in the morning if your house is drafty, a time when the morning chill is more invigorating than painful. It is leaves finally turning, swirling and falling and crunching beneath your feet. It is Halloween skies that come after Halloween and coffee tasting even better in the morning, just because your cup feels so good wrapped in your hands.

And it is football, of course. This week, the Ravens and the Steelers meet in the Burgh. Monday night will find me in the family pub with The Boyfriend and assorted friends and family. The Boyfriend and I will revel in our rivalry as he and everyone else in the place cheer the home team, and my mother and I in our quiet way take our lumps from the crowd and send good juju to the Steelers. Tuesday morning and work will come way too early, and one of us will go off bleary-eyed but victorious while the other stumbles workwards half-asleep and sad.

I live for this shit, and I love it. But although fall is my time of year, the period where both my energy levels and positive attitude seem to peak, where game day makes the daily rituals of living that much more fun, it is also a time that makes me immeasurably sad.

To me, this is Big Bill’s time.

Big Bill and his wife have been close friends of my parents for years. But because they fell somewhere in the middle of my parents age and my own, they always seemed more like older siblings to me than “my parents friends.” In fact, my dad gave her away at their wedding celebration.

I have loved them and looked up to them for years, although I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. They worked hard, played harder, and loved each other and the world around them in a way I can only call the realest way I’ve known. They organized coat and blanket drives each holiday season, baked pies and delivered them to family and friends on Christmas morning, and were always at the forefront of any events held by the Steelers fan club. Big Bill was a smiling fixture behind the giant grill that fed the masses that came to tailgate each game day.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. What was even more amazing than their involvement in the world was their commitment to each other. They were lovers and best friends who brought out the best in each other. They were always gushing about their feelings for each other, and didn’t care who thought it was sappy. You could see the attraction, affection and genuine respect they carried in their souls for each other in everything they did, and hear it in everything they said.

Being with them was what told me my own marriage would end, long before we took the steps to actually end it. My husband and I didn’t do things together or share our friendships with others and our involvement in the world the way they did. We operated in our own little silos and when we were at home or somewhere having dinner together, we might talk about them. On the rare occasions we did do things together – usually things related to football – I’d notice the way Bill would drop a kiss on his wife’s forehead or smile at her across a room, and try real hard to ignore the fact that it had been a long time since we even thought about acting that way.

When we finally separated, my world was a strange mix of relief, excitement, sadness, fear and constant anxiety. I wanted to start over, but had no clue how to begin. Sometimes, in the safety of the family pub, my loneliness and sense of failure and fear would come out more than any hopes I might have about how life could be now. In those moments, it seemed nothing I could tell myself or anything anyone else could say to me really mattered. But Bill, in his simple, point-blank way, got through one night when he looked at me over his Irish Mist, pulled me into a bear hug, and said this:

“You deserve to be loved the way I love her. You settled for less than that for years. Now that you know what you deserve, you might know when you find it.”

Bill put it in perspective for me. Being alone after years of not being single was much harder and more frightening sometimes than being complacent and secure, but never really happy. But this starting over was what I had to do if I ever wanted a chance at that other kind of life.

It was probably about four months after that conversation that Bill died suddenly and unexpectedly. That was a year and several months ago now.

And still, even after that much time (which I know isn’t really a lot), I find myself so angry about that. I am outrageously pissed that he isn’t here anymore to share that life with the woman he loved, that life we all look for so hard and most of us never believe we’ll really find. I was supposed to have to start over. But damn it all to hell, she wasn’t. And each day that she does, I am awed by her spirit and her bravery, her heart and her soul, and her ability to smile through tears and live and laugh sometimes and love us all and make our world a better place in spite of what she's been through.

I will never again take love lightly, and I owe so much of that to both of them. They showed through an example they didn’t even try to set – they were just being – what it could be. And what happened showed just how precious and fragile it is even when it is the best it can be, and how you can never, ever take one tiny moment of it for granted.

I have so many memories of Bill. Weekends at my parent’s cabin, brief visits on Christmas morning, summer parties at their home, and countless late nights of laughter, drinks and friendship at the pub. But for some reason, the football season is still always harder. It is our group trip to the Burgh and him manning grills, his cheerful love of our team and congratulatory or better-luck-next-time hugs that were all flannel and the smell of charcoal. Every now and then one of us remembers that in his last year with us, he saw them win the Superbowl, and we still can’t vocalize the thought without tears.

I met The Boyfriend about a month before Bill died. But we were still in that “getting to know you” phase where rather than venture into each other’s worlds, we met somewhere in the middle and did the date thing. So they never got to meet. In part, it was the way, when we really didn’t know each other that well yet, that The Boyfriend would call and let me just talk, talk, talk, or cry, or say nothing at all about this man who was gone that gave me my first glimpses of his heart and soul. I wish like hell they had met, and know they would have been friends.

I miss you, my friend Bill. And each day when I wake with him beside me, or we share a quiet glimpse and laugh in some crowded place, or have a moment of having eyes only for each other even though we know damn well we’ll be going home together and have plenty of time for that later, I thank you for helping me understand what I deserve.

And I’ll never watch a Steelers game without wishing you were with us.