Image by pvera via Flickr

I had another reality check Saturday, this one involved a young brother sister pair that play on the soccer team i coach for 7 and 8 year olds.  I thought I was prepared, I wasn’t.

Step back in time 3 weeks.

I don’t know if any of you have ever coached a youth team before.  Usually what I do is call all the parents of the players and leave them a message on their answering machine about when practice is and game details for the upcoming season.  It works out pretty well and goes fast because most people are at work or out running errands during the day.  I got answering machines for all the players except the brother and sister pair.  Their father happened to be at home.  I went through the  info and at the end the father asked me to call him back in a few days to remind him.  His wife, and kids mother, died the day before after a four year battle with breast cancer.  He certainly had reason to have a lot of things on his mind.

How do you react to something like that?

When you think about it, the scenario becomes even more disturbing.  A young family with two kids under 7 years old.  The majority of both of their lives their mother was ill.  She had probably been through numerous bouts of chemo and at times couldn’t even hold, hug, or touch her children.  How do you explain to a young child of that age that mommy is sick, let alone explain to them what is going on when she died.  I was disturbed and sympathetic about it and I wasn’t even directly involved with the situation until our game on Saturday.

That made it even harder.

The structure for the under 8 group is a 45 minute practice and a 45 minute game.  The weather was a little dreary but not bad overall.

Many of the kids know each other on the team  from school or a previous season and I was thankful that one girl on the team knew the daughter of the family i speak of.  I thought that would ease any tension.

Sometimes it is hard to know how sympathetic or supportive to be.  Do you come right out and express sympathy and try be supportive?  What do you say exactly, What is or isn’t appropriate?  I feel the same way at calling hours visits.

I spoke briefly with the father in private after meeting the kids and was appreciative of my offerings of support and told me that sometimes his son’s spirits were down and it had been challenging to get them up.

I am sure it is.  Most adults would have a hard time dealing with the situation of a lost loved one, let alone a young child.

His son had never played soccer before but has some good skills and strength.  He showed some frustration with the game and his ability during practice and the game, but overall he did a really great job for a first time player with very little instruction.

Here is the heart breaking part.

His sister took a ball that was kicked pretty hard in the face.  It was painful as the ball hit her smartly on the nose and she went down.   It was one of those things that just happen in sports.  Ultimately she was fine and no damage done, but her brother was very angry that someone hurt his sister.

He was at the point of rage and when play resumed was aggressively going after other players on the other team.

When I grabbed him to calm him down he was crying and upset.  He told me that he was angry that they hurt his sister and that she was crying.  He said that it reminded him of his mother.

It was awful.  It was all I could do to maintain my composure and try to talk to him.  I gave him a hug and he calmed down a little.  I sent him off to his dad, who was still holding his crying daughter.  It was a site to bring tears to the eyes, the broken family arm in arm on the sidelines.

Things calmed down and the game resumed and both kids returned to play.   The game and experience finished up on a better note.

Now picture this, your back in your car with a muddy child on the way home to get cleaned up.  Your pulling out of the parking lot you look over to see the shattered family standing over the graveside of their mother. You see, there is a cemetery beside the soccer fields.  That is where their mother is buried.

It almost seemed cruel to me that the soccer field is located where it is.  When we hear about a story like this we feel bad.  We may think about it for a few hours or every day for a while.   Frankly I had trouble sleeping Saturday night.

But this family lives with it every minute of every day.

It was great to see that the father has his kids in activities and there were many other family members there to support the kids, God bless them.

I hope your take away from this post is to remember that with all the things going on in our lives there is really only one thing that matters, and that is your family.   Every day we all need to remember to hug our parents, sons, daughters, and husband or wife.

Life is too precious to be taken for granted.

Live each day to the fullest and make time for those you love and enjoy spending time with.  The project will get done, the house will get cleaned, etc….

Please take time to follow the links in this post to educate yourself about breast cancer and how to do a self screening. Hopefully with education and awareness we can eliminate this horrible condition that is robbing children like these of their mother.

Please leave a comment if you have a story to share or a site that can help raise awareness.

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