In May of 2000, my father was in the hospital undergoing treatment for the cancer that would take his life by the end of that summer. He had fought long and hard, turning a six-month prognosis into a seven-year battle, but the doctors knew the end was near and had suggested hospice care.
The family was gathered around his bed and a woman representing the hospice care unit came in to give an explanation of how the care worked and how he would stay at home, but there would be daily nursing care that would do the utmost to insure that his final days would be as comfortable as possible.
The author Jeffrey Peterson and his son,
Cade. Jeffrey's father instilled in him a
love of baseball.
But my father had misunderstood and thought that hospice care meant that he would receive the same level of treatment, but in his home environment that he so desperately wanted.
Shortly into her presentation, he realized what the purpose of hospice care was and interrupted to tell her thank you, but he was not yet willing to resign himself to his fate. She was very gracious and made sure that they would be there to help him whenever he was ready.
When the family was dispersing, my father, a fanatic follower of the Angels from their inception, motioned my brother and me over to his bedside. He was weakened from his struggle, but he wasn’t yet through being a father and he wanted to give us another lesson.
Throughout our lives, he used baseball as a means to teach us life principles that he felt were important. He believed that the beauty of the game was its simplicity and that that were certain facets that stood for values that transcended the game itself. He glanced around to make sure my mother had left the room and softly repeated something he had been telling us for over forty or so years.
“You don’t leave the game before the final out.”
We nodded. We understood.
By Jeffrey Peterson
