I haven’t said anything about it on this blog, but I’ve been dealing with some pretty serious shit lately.  For anybody who has asked, I haven’t hidden the fact that my mother and I were about as close as oil and water.

But, if there’s one thing in common that we did have, outside of religion, was the Astros.

It was my mother who introduced me to baseball.  My dad had one of the meanest sinkers I’ve ever caught, but my mother was the one who loved the game.  When her parents moved to Texas from New York, Babe Ruth helped my grandmother out by holding a certain little baby on the ferry.  When my mother was dying, I was able to tell her about my son, whose stroke looks like some melding of Reggie Jackson and the Babe.

It was my mother’s parents who had the badass tickets at Stros games when I was growing up.

The movie “Field of Dreams” is as much about Joe Jackson as it is about the caste system in India.  The movie is about the bond between a father and son, long since estranged (and dead, I guess) by the paths that life took them.  Without the game of catch, the last month has been some bed-ridden version of “Field of Dreams” for me, an excuse to bond with my mother.  We got to watch her almost beloved Yankees play her actually beloved Astros.  We got to talk about the poor composition of the team.

Then, she went to sleep.

Then, she died a couple of days later.

Out of everything else, it’s this simplistic bond - the bond of baseball - that I feel like I have failed at more than any other with my mother.  All other things considered, perhaps it’s that one commonality that we shared that could’ve given us more time together.  Perhaps, everything else considered, maybe not.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen a co-worker persue his dream, and my mother died.  Why are they similar?  It’s always been those things I haven’t done that I’ve regretted more than the things I have done.

I wouldn’t have done things too differently, but I do regret certain parts of the situation.  And I think baseball could’ve been the key.

(This post is dedicated to CEP, who turned out to be a helluva stand-up guy at the end)