‘Just a little bit more than a game.’ Grief and loss on the basketball court and off.

It’s just a game.

It is mostly, and mainly, just a game.

But.

If you’ll indulge me, it’s a little more than that.

It’s running through the house as a kid, hair wet from the bath, looking for my favorite UK nightgown cause it’s March and I’m allowed to stay up late on a school night to watch the game.

It’s sitting in the car as a middle schooler, listening to Cawood Ledford call the 1992 Elite Eight game, my stomach in knots, leaning closer and closer to the car door speakers, my mom pulled over as we will the Cats to win, watching the game in our minds’ eye, living and dying with each passing game second.

It’s running down Euclid Avenue as a University of Kentucky student, eyes wide, smile stretched wider, arms flung to their very tips because we’ve just done it: we’ve won the national championship! High fiving people I don’t know, slightly concerned for the kids on top of buildings and cars, singing the fight song in the street in the middle of the night with a thousand students riding the same wave.

It’s being six weeks pregnant at Madison Square Garden and trying not to throw up as Coach Cal and John Wall led the CATS to victory over UConn in a barn burner. It’s going to the SEC Tournament that year and watching them cut down the nets. It’s driving to Syracuse to watch them lose in the Elite Eight, Baby Knox along for the ride, the adrenaline coursing through us both, the joy and the pain and Jerrod’s speeding ticket and the nerves and the stress, and my child, in utero, already a fan.

It’s winning the championship in 2012, newly pregnant again, and walking on cloud nine to my OB appointment the next day, apologizing to Baby Rhett for the intensity of the night before, telling him how selfless Anthony Davis played and promising to take him to games one day. Then the doctor told me we may need to terminate and my euphoria evaporated.

And now it’s holding those two young boys of mine, stroking their hair, understanding their heartbreak and feeling exactly the same way inside as they sob, small shoulders shaking, young cheeks red and glistening, jaws clenched as they lament, all lost.

It’s thinking about what’s happening in Ukraine and berating myself for being THIS upset over a game.

And mostly, mainly and mostly, Thursday night was the first time in my life that my papaw didn’t fill out a bracket. First time I wasn’t calling my brother as we tried to remember the yahoo password to the account we used for him once a year. “Fishing? Or Fishin? Or, what’s his password. It’s gotta be something with fishing.”

It was calling Papaw every year since 2008 and getting his picks over the phone for our family Tourney Pick ‘Em. It was him never taking Kentucky to the final, it was his inexplicable distaste for schoolmate and local hero Joe B. Hall, it was his handwriting scratching his picks into the bracket he tore from the local paper and it was my mamaw shouting at him to speak louder so I could hear. “She can’t hear you, Joe,” she would say, loud and robust, and boy, I could certainly hear her.

It was him saying, “Seton Hall, Baylor, Florida, Memphis, etc…”, his country accent thick and soft voice sweet through the phone, Mamaw repeating every choice loudly in the background and providing commentary on his choices. “Duke?! I still hate Laettner” or “Louisville?! Pitino ain’t worth nothin’ since he left UK,” but he pressed on, this bracket his own, me typing his picks into the computer and shaking my head at his disloyalty to the Cats, and my mamaw calling me afterward with her own choices and saying, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do with him.”

It’s sobbing on the kitchen floor tonight, when I thought everyone was asleep, when the grief gripped me again, when Jerrod found me and held me and broke his rule about not talking about the game after a loss, when he let me explain how suddenly the grief overtook me because I’d do anything to check the yahoo tourney page and see my papaw’s profile pic at the top.

What a tremendous loss.

And still, today I’ll wear Kentucky gear because I don’t give up on my team, or my people, or myself.

If you’ll indulge me, it’s just a little bit more than a game.

Alecia Whitaker is a young adult author from Cynthiana, KY, graduate of the University of Kentucky, and momma to four little New Yorkers who bleed blue.

This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 8:54 AM.