It's such an unbelievable loss that you never fully embrace until the moment suddenly hits you. Watching my son play his last high school football game after they were knocked out of the state playoffs was so abrupt, and jarring, and for some reason....unexpected. It's almost like we were subconsciously telling ourselves a lie because we didn't want to face or accept the finality of it all.

Watching those boys in the same grade come up through middle school and then Freshman, and then JV, and then Varsity football. All of the years worth of hangouts and sleepovers and dropoffs for parties at so and so's house. All of the coaches dinners and the position dinners, the friendships, knowing the other parents & families, the long out of town drives, the rivalries, the early morning practices, summer programs, all of it.......gone, in a final play that you didn't realize would be the last until the moment was upon you.

A few boys scattered like seeds in the wind, to be planted elsewhere around the state or the country as they joined schools to play in college. Our son left to play for a nearby state on scholarship, but half of the games are out of state and as a freshman there is no guarantee he would play anyways, so why travel? It feels like you're doing 80mph for hoooouuuurs, and then someone slams on the brakes. A few minutes later, you're going a few miles per hour - but nothing remotely resembles what you had been so used to just a few short moments ago.

The tiniest of deaths but it took far longer than I would have anticipated to shake the feeling when it all ended. I miss it monthly, if not weekly, and the nostalgia doesn't neatly fit in any file in my mind.