The worst Michigan-Michigan State week of my life

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***Editor’s note: This column was initially posted on October 17, 2023. My mom ended up dying late Thursday night of that week on October 19th. I’m re-posting this a year later to honor her life, and to share a reminder of the value that college sports and community can have beyond the scoreboard.***

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It’s Michigan-Michigan State week, and I’m spending it in the great state of Michigan. This would typically be fantastic news — particularly for me, a Michigan native who has since moved to Texas for career reasons and set up roots there with my wife and kids. Despite the move, I still consider myself a Michigangander first and foremost. The Great Lakes State is absolutely still one of my favorite places to be, particularly during one of my favorite weeks of the year: Michigan-Michigan State week.

This is the week where I’m supposed to be “on.” Be the guy on Twitter (or whatever I’m supposed to call it now) telling jokes. Riling people up. Getting those delicious likes and RTs and enjoying the dopamine rush that comes along with it. Helping set the stage for a really fun week that really highlights makes college sports great: high stakes battles where everyone’s got a dog in the race, and the only feeling more intense than winning the big matchup is how you feel when you lose it. Sure, the rivalry has probably gotten too riled up in recent years. But at its core, and with people who know how to banter in a way that can actually be fun and not overly toxic, it’s a great example of what college sports can offer that is just straight-up lacking in professional sports.

But on this Michigan-Michigan State Week 2023, being in Michigan is anything but great news. And football is the last thing on my mind.

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I’m writing this column from my parents’ living room. Sitting next to me in a hospice bed is my mom. It’s the same woman my family came and visited just two short months ago from Texas. She was the one riding a gator utility vehicle through my sister’s backwoods property, walking all around town and taking pictures with her five grandkids. In fact, my wife and I even revealed some surprise news to her and my dad on that trip: grandkid No. 6 is on the way early next year.

It was a long overdue trip back up to Michigan that had been delayed by pandemics, busy schedules and other excuses that seemed important at the time, but in hindsight, meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Fast forward a month and everything changed. My mom, the same woman who would walk multiple miles per week at the Tamarac Wellness Center in Fremont, MI, as part of her focus on living a long, happy and healthy life, was admitted to Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids a few short days after her 72nd birthday in early September. She was just going to be monitored after a lot of shortness of breath and a lack of appetite. But a couple days of monitoring turned into a couple weeks of tests and a frantic search for answers.

I drove 1,100 miles from Texas to Michigan in early October to be there for what was looking like “the big test” — the one that was finally going to yield some answers. But we somehow were met with more uncertainty and even more questions than we initially had. A week later, I made the long, emotional drive back to Texas absent of both answers and peace.

The next week was kind of a blur. I had a complete inability to focus on anything. My work (both my “real” job and this newsletter) was an absolute chore. Yes, things got done for both. But it lacked heart and my mind was elsewhere. I rarely slept. And I wasn’t as present with my family as I’d like to be. In attempting to juggle 3 or 4 things while my mind was on a fifth thing more than 1,000 miles away, I essentially failed at all of them and felt like I was continuing to let everyone down.

In the middle of last week, with the blessing of my wonderful wife who has been SuperWoman through this whole stretch, I flew on short notice back to Michigan to be with my mom, dad and sister once again. At the time, my mom was approaching day 20 of her hospital stay at Butterworth. We still weren’t getting answers. But when you’re inching closer to a month’s stay at a hospital, you know how things are trending.

About an hour after I arrived at Gerald R Ford International Airport and made my way to the hospital along with my sister, we got the answers we had waited so long for — but also the diagnosis we had all feared.

My mom was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma — a rare form of mesothelioma that is only diagnosed to a few hundred patients each year. The worst part: the initial symptoms are usually subtle, so by the time it is diagnosed, the disease has often spread to a point where it’s impossible to stop. Such was the case with my mom.

I don’t understand it. I can’t understand it — trust me, I’ve tried. Sleepless night after sleepless night that have followed, I’ve tried to apply logic to this. Tried to pray about it. Tried to solve an unsolvable puzzle. But cancer didn’t ask for my permission first. It’s terminal. It’s fast-acting. Surgery isn’t an option, given how weak the disease has made my mom over the last few weeks. Chemo isn’t an option, either, given all the places it has spread — spleen, diaphragm, liver and gall bladder.

Cancer is something you know is devastating, but you don’t come close to feeling its impact until you live through it.

My mom is living through it now. So is everyone in this family. And it’s absolutely paralyzing.

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I’d say I’m sorry for not centering this column around Michigan’s game on Saturday. But I wouldn’t mean it — not even in the slightest. I promise this will eventually have a point and I’m not just trying to subject you to my own personal diary. But for me, this Michigan-Michigan State week isn’t about entertaining folks. It’s about my mom. And those around her that have gone out of their way to be there for her over the last few weeks. And most importantly, the last few days.

Just a day after receiving word of her diagnosis and the numbing “days to weeks” timetable that came with it, we pushed hard to get my mom released into hospice care at my parents’ home — the same house my sister and I grew up in and the house my parents have spent their 40-plus years of marriage. We made that happen last Thursday afternoon, much to the joy of my mom, whose message in her ICU bed 24 hours prior was “just get me home.”

In the days that have followed, she has gotten waves of visitors that were now possible to come by the house, but didn’t make sense in a family-only ICU setting. All eight of her siblings that live in our hometown (yes, that’s not a misprint) were able to come by and visit with her. Same goes for grandkids that were in town, as well as my two sons from Texas who visited through FaceTime.

On Saturday, I watched the Michigan-Indiana game alongside her in the living room I grew up in.

This wasn’t necessarily any sort of revelation to me, because I’ve never questioned what I prioritize most in my life. But it’s certainly eye-opening to see just how little I care about something like Michigan football — something I admittedly care a lot about — when it’s in contrast with the health of the woman who brought me into this world.

I still did a write-up on the game, but it came upon a rewatch far later in the night once everyone else in the house was asleep. Honestly, that’s when a lot of my writing has taken place in recent weeks. I haven’t been able to sleep anyway, so why not make that the window where I can be productive? That productivity certainly isn’t happening during the day, when I’m just numbed and paralyzed by all things mom.

I’ve pre-written some content that I’ll be rolling out this week for Michigan-Michigan State week — we’ll still have the usual staples leading up to the game. I know there are people who subscribe to this expecting content, and that’s a very reasonable expectation that I’ll deliver on.

In a perfect world, I’ll even be tweeting later in the week. It’s not that I don’t want to care about football right now. I just can’t even fathom a reality where my mind is able to focus on something other than my mom.

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Having all of this play out on Michigan-Michigan State week is actually quite fitting. Because a major reason why Michigan (and oddly in many ways, Michigan State) is so important to me is because of my mom.

A lot of my friends are University of Michigan legacies. I was not. Hell, I wasn’t even a college legacy. I was the first member of my family to go off to college.

I grew up in rural West Michigan. While there are certainly some Michigan fans in the area, my very farm-heavy hometown of Fremont definitely skews green. Neither of my parents went to college, so I didn’t have an affiliation pressured on to me through that avenue. But they definitely bled green, and wanted me to do so, too. And it’s likely because of that pressure that I went the other direction by default.

I wasn’t a bad kid by any means. But I definitely learned early on that I liked to push buttons. And if my parents were bleeding green, it became apparent at an early age that I’d be rooting for the opposite just to be a little shithead. My parents tell stories of me rejecting MSU shirts as early as kindergarten, because I was “Go Blue all the way,” I’d say.

My parents were not “Go Blue all the way,” but they certainly were as blue collar as they come. I can’t think of a period of my childhood when my parents weren’t both working multiple jobs to make ends meet. But when it comes to “primary” jobs, my mom was a cook for the Gerber Baby Food plant in my high school years. My dad worked a number of different jobs, but maybe the most memorable one was when he was the custodian for my middle school when I was in that oh-so-angsty pre-/early teen stage.

Luckily, something that many may fear as embarrassing to someone at that age was never the case for me. But as I’m even more removed from the sacrifices they made for me as a child, the majority of which were all working toward that North Star of “attending the University of Michigan,” those feelings are further and further from the embarrassment side of the spectrum and more and more toward the inspiration end of it.

On winter break of my senior year of high school in 2003, that goal became a reality. I got the thick envelope from the University of Michigan’s admissions department. It may not sound like the grandest achievement for some of you (I didn’t realize until arriving on campus how many East coasters land at Michigan because their Ivy league plans didn’t work out), but it was the grandest achievement for me. And there were no two people that were more supportive and excited for that achievement than the ones who made all the sacrifices to make it possible: my mom and dad. A few months later when my parents accompanied me to Campus Day — a day-long event on campus in Ann Arbor for admitted high school seniors that emphasizes the student experience — they were donning Maize and Blue. And since that day, I’m not sure I’ve seen them voluntarily wear something green since.

This is why I never judge “WalMart Wolverines.” There are so many different reasons to cheer for a school, and “because I went there” is only one of them. I had a strong affinity for the University of Michigan long before I went there. It certainly strengthened while and after I attended, but who the hell am I to gatekeep who can and can’t root for a school? My parents started bleeding Maize and Blue when their son’s goal became a reality. And it soon became one of the biggest things we bonded over for the next two decades.

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That’s the thing about sports. For me, it’s college sports. For you, it could be MLB. Or the NFL. Or golf. Just about everyone has a sport they love, and I’ve always found it weird when someone can be completely sports agnostic. That’s not because sports are the greatest thing ever. It’s because sports are such a great way to create, cultivate and enhance relationships.

I loved watching the Michigan-Michigan State game my freshman year at The Big House when Michigan was down by 17 midway through the fourth quarter and came back to win in OT. Not just because it was an incredible game, but because I watched it alongside my buddy Chad and I could remind him for future days, weeks, months, years and decades about the fact that he wanted to leave once MSU went up by 17 but I insisted that we stick around “just in case.” He became a lifelong friend. We stood up in each others’ weddings. And we still text in-game every single Saturday of every single fall.

I loved going on road trips to Pasadena and New York City and State College and Columbus and Minnesota and Oklahoma City and Tampa and Bloomington and Champaign and Orlando as a college student to see Michigan football, hoops and softball. Not just because it was great to witness some wildly memorable games and moments, but because of the memories I made with friends before, during and after the games, too (if you’ve never made a 64-entry “best curse word” bracket for a long road trip, I highly encourage you give it a try sometime).

And I loved watching Michigan-Indiana with my mom last Saturday. Not because J.J. McCarthy upped his Heisman odds and Michigan further solidified itself as a national contender (those elements are obviously great, too). But because I got to spend quality time next to my mom, quite possibly watching our last Michigan game together.

If you’re a believer in prayer (I am!), I’d be honored if you’d pray for her. But also for my dad and sister and everyone else that’s been rocked by the whirlwind last month of our lives. I’ve had windows where I’ve gone back to Texas and returned to “normal life” over this past month — or at least attempted to do. They have not.

Also, if you’re a medical professional: God bless you. Particularly if you’re in the hospice field. I will never be able to fully express the gratitude that my entire family has for how quickly the hospice team has reacted in getting my mom home and giving her a dignified end to her amazing life. I will have so many memories of these last few weeks — both good and bad — for the rest of my life. But the expression of joy she had on her face when she was taken from the ambulance that transported her from Grand Rapids into her home in Fremont last week is something I will never, ever forget.

“I made it home,” she said.

She sure did.

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Whether you’re an alum or one of those dreaded “WalMart Wolverines,” if you have a relationship that’s forged through this rivalry, please don’t take it for granted. You don’t have to make a choice between one or the other. You can help feed and strengthen those bonds through things like college sports. They’re not mutually exclusive. They can exist at once.

A few weeks ago on my first trip back to Michigan to be with my mom, I was in the hospital with her as she prepared to get a biopsy of her liver.

After getting moved from her normal hospital bed to a transportable one, she was asked if she had any questions before being wheeled down to where the procedure would take place.

My mom, who usually goes out of her way to avoid doing anything that would inconvenience someone, did end up having an uncharacteristic ask.

“One thing,” she said, wearing the green gown she was issued by the hospital. “Do you have anything in blue? This is a Go Blue family.”

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