MMA Will Leave Memories for My Family

It has already been a bittersweet day for me and it has just started.

I slept straight through Monday and awoke at 12:53 AM Tuesday to read the news that Evan Tanner had been found dead on Palo Verde in California.

My first thought was that on a mountaintop he could be closer to the stars and heaven in his last adventure to find meaning in his life. I hope it was a beautiful view.

While trying to calm myself and make sense of my world, I read an article by Grey Ghost on "College Football Saturdays: The Empty Chair" and memories of his deceased father which brought back one of my memories of my father who died at the age of 36.

My father was a die hard Cubs fan. He received a lot of teasing, both good natured and otherwise about his choice. We lived in Peoria, Illinois, and were surrounded with fans of the Cardinals and White Sox, among many others, so there were many eager to throw the first stone where baseball was concerned.

I am a Cubs fan, though I have lapsed in my devotion and cannot name the present line-up. It is just a memorial to my father's fighting spirit and refusal to give up his faith in his favorite sport's team and his favorite memories from his boyhood with his brother who died at 21 and father who died at the age of 39. A love of baseball was just something that they shared.

Now that I am of an age more advanced than my father's was, I think of the legacy I will leave for my family.

My sons will remember when I was healthy and competed in horse shows and attended the rodeos they participated in as very young men.

My grandchildren will mostly remember how Multiple Sclerosis wiped out my participation  in all of my favorite activities in life. Even being in the audience at their events became too trying.

So my days in the bleachers today are spent writing article on the Bleacher Report.

Now my sport of preference is Mixed Martial Arts and my participation is limited to the vicarious pleasure of watching via TV and Pay Per View and then sharing my impressions with others.

For my brother Chuck who lives in Arizona, my love of MMA is the single thing I could never talk him into sharing with me. He even married Connie, my best friend from nursing school. She also had MS and died last August.

My oldest son will doubtlessly remember knocking me out one night and how I always appreciated the KO's on TV more than I did that one.

Of course my youngest son, grandsons and one granddaughter in particular are usually present on Saturday nights to experience my obsession of the sport with me.

I am sure when I am gone that Sierra and my husband will laugh remembering her teasing me about sleeping in my most comfortable GSP tee and "going to sleep with Georges."

My husband will have to sort through all of my MMA memorabilia and figure out who will receive all of the autographed pictures, hats, shirts and posters I have collected and which he used to question the costs of after the eBay auctions were ended.

My youngest son will remember how he had to help me out of chairs, the car and up and down the four steps to our house. I never jumped out of my chair with enthusiasm during the PPV fights like he and his sons did, but while my voice held out I yelled loudest.

Cody, my oldest grandson, will surely remember our twenty and fifty dollar bets on the Matt Hughes vs GSP fights which I won the majority of before he converted and became a Georges fan. I always paid up, but never collected due to some technicality that he thought up. What a finagler he is!

Cody may also remember that I would make predictions that came true and would use the basics of kinesiology and physiology to explain them to him, although he was the wrestler and  I the armchair fanatic.

Poor four year old Trevor may recall the frozen bag of peas we put on his head after he hit the floor headfirst while attempting a rear naked choke on Cody who moved as Trevor was leaping form the back of the sofa during UFC 87. (Grandma does have rules about climbing and jumping from the furniture that only Grandma can remember!)

My daughter-in-law will remember receiving Matt Hughes' "Made in America" for Christmas in 2007 and receiving the Iceman's autobiography on her birthday in June of 2008, as well as attending the UFC in Cincinnati with my husband, her ex (my youngest son) and Cody. I saved money to send them and they left early but did not make it to the weigh-in for pictures, as I had planned.

MMA will probably be my legacy to them as well as what I have written on the Bleacher Report--and nothing would make me happier.

This part of my life has been reinvigorating for me and given me a reason to keep on going.

 I have to love the MMA!

*(Pictured are:  My youngest son Steven, Jim, Jim's daughter Kady, Grandma Dee, Uncle Chuck. (On the bike) Hailey, Kelsey, Trevor, Cody with his head bowed, and Sierra.)