Deep Thoughts on the Patriots, Prayer Cards, and Processing Grief
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” - CS Lewis, A Grief Observed
It's been a full work week since I got back from San Francisco and I haven't written about this yet, because I'm still working out a lot of things. Finding the right words has been a struggle. And part of what I'm about to say is a from a post I actually started months ago, but just couldn't find the words. I'm still not sure I have them. But it's worth a shot. And Sunday in Santa Clara is as good a jumping off point as any. So I'll give this a shot.
The one common trait among all the battles ever fought (and judging by all the computer-generated history videos that the algorithm floods my YouTube with, there have been loads of them), it's that before men engage an enemy, they get down on their knees and pray. To their gods. To their spirits. To their ancestors. Whether they pray for divine help, mercy or glory, they've been doing it universally, forever. Throughout the ages. Across all cultures. Jericho. Troy. Athens and Sparta. The Romans and Carthaginians. Samurai. The Ayyubid and the Crusaders. Mongols. The US Calvary and the Sioux. My father on the USS Solomons. My father-in-law serving in Patton's infantry. It's in the very nature of men of great valor and courage to pray for victory as they prepare to do battle.
I'm not those men. Not by a longshot. And that's not what I was hoping to do.
This isn't easy to admit, but what I am is broken. Missing major pieces. Hollowed out. Like the Warren Zevon line, "Sometimes I feel like my shadow's casting me." For what's coming up on 16 months, exactly.
Why I carried the prayer cards of three of the most important men in my life - all gone to God in a two-week span in the middle of the 2024 football season - into a box at the Super Bowl, wasn't entirely clear, even to me. I just knew that I couldn't not have them with me. I could've forgotten to pack my travel toiletries kit and left my wallet in the hotel room, but I wasn't going to the stadium without those. It was involuntary.
Contrary to what some of the comments under Dave's post (and as someone once said, reading what people say about you on social media is like cutting yourself) assumed, I wasn't summoning Thorntons to come down from the heavens and make the Patriots win. This wasn't Angels in the Backfield. I wasn't holding three Aces hoping to draw great, cosmic football full house. Not that I would've turned down the help. Half the time I couldn't get these guys to let me finish a story without them over-talking me; expecting them to help beat the Seahawks felt like a big ask. Besides, as one of my sons put it, "St. Michael the Archangel couldn't have protected Drake Maye." Which, while theologically untrue, is a great line and I should be stealing it instead of giving him credit.
By way of background, these are the cards I was holding.
From L to R:
--My brother Jim, lost suddenly to heart failure as he was getting ready for work on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
--My brother Jack, who was recovering from an illness, but was otherwise in good health. His cardiologist confirmed thatTakotsubo cardiomyopathy, more commonly called "Broken heart sydrome," is very real, and likely contributed to his passing.
--Our cousin Phil. Jack and he were best friends in every sense of the word. They were born three days apart, and died within 24 hours of each other.
By way of background, we were pretty unique in that our family was four brothers and a sister, living across the street from our cousins, who were four brothers and a sister. Our house number was No. 75, theirs was 74. Our really distant cousins lived in the next neighborhood over, a good 10-minute walk away. Honestly, I thought every family lived like that. And we were all similar ages to our No. 74 counterparts. (What kind of freakiness our Greatest Generation parents were pulling, I leave it to you to figure out. If I give it any thought I'm going to need some very expensive therapy.) Anyway, it's sometimes said the Grim Reaper is undefeated (though this is one Catholic boy who's only to happy to tell you about the One who handed him his only career L). And in 2024, he was swinging a hot scythe when it came to the Thorntons.
What they all did was help raise me from birth like a veal calf to be a Patriots fan. Boys and men bond with each other over a great many things. So did we. These were guys with a wide variety of interests. Movies, books, music, golf, Bigfoot. Topics too numerous to list. And being the second youngest among two families of Thorntons with 10 kids in total, you had to be conversant in a Jeopardy! board's worth of subjects. Otherwise they'd forget you were there and not feed you. These three were basically polymaths who could tell you whatever you needed to know about practically any topic. Whether you actually wanted to listen or not was secondary.
But above all else, we loved the New England Patriots. The first sporting event I ever saw was a Pats game at the old stadium. Jack, Phil, our brother Bill (who lives in Alaska doing very well, thanks for asking) and some of their buddies brought me along with them. The tailgate scene was a dirt parking lot filled with axle-bending craters like the surface of Mars. The stadium looked like a glorified high school field. I've told this before and I'll repeat it now. I have a vivid memory of walking up the ramp prepared to be dazzled. I was seeing pro sports live for the first time. The NFL, even. The same league I saw on TV every Sunday. The Steelers and Cowboys and Raiders! And when I came up into the stands and looked around at the Soviet Bloc architecture and aluminum bleachers half full with drunk Massholes, I said to them, "I'm just a kid. And this is my first game. But even I know this place is a dump."
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But the "damage," if you want to call it that, was done. I was tagging along with the adults and was the king of all I surveyed. The team was unexpectedly good that year. They went to the playoffs, before getting bounced out in the Wild Card game. And the experience left a permanent imprint. To this day I have vivid sense memory of hanging out with those guys in the parking lot that comes back to me ever time I walk the tailgate at Gillette or even smell charcoal coming from my neighbors yard.
The last time I got to experience it was with all my brothers. Against the Cowboys in October of 2021, when Bill was in town.
We hung out. Repeated old stories we've told a thousand times. Had beers and cigars. Jack put playlists on the Bluetooth. Chatted up random strangers in the spaces next to ours. Time stood still. The afternoon stretched on forever. And I was the little brother tagging along with the big kids. As always.
Last year I was in a golf tournament. After the round, the meal, the raffles the beers, a lifelong friend and his brothers told me they were headed to the Chinese restaurant up the street from where we live and for me to follow them. I was actually 100% prepared to call it a day and head home. But I knew I needed this. I think they did too, which is why they insisted I come. It was more than a good time. It was beautiful. A mixed blessing, to be sure. Bittersweet, I'm not going lie. Watching brothers hanging out as buddies, laughing about nonsense only they understand, is profound. Yes, it remind you of what you once had that is gone for good. (In this life, anyway. Not in the next.) But it's very much what being a man is all about when you're doing it right. Being best friends with your brothers and treating your friends like brothers. Aside from being a good father and husband, there's no higher calling for any man.
If Jim, Jack or Phil were still with us, they'd had dined out on this trip more than anyone. As Jim's younger daughter said when I told them Dave invited me on this insane adventure, "My dad would be halfway through his contacts list bragging about this to everyone." And he would've called me three times a day, minimum. Jack would have watched the All-22s of every Seahawks game and fed me the best analysis in the country. Like he did every week during our sometimes 90-minute postgame conversations. Phil would've called like he did that one time I went to a Notre Dame game to ask how many Rudy quotes I'd gotten in so far. (The O/U was 500.) And it hit me that the last game I saw with him was the 2003 Divisional game against Jeff Fisher's Titans, when it was so cold, the bottle of water Phil bought was frozen solid by the time he got back to our seats.
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And I would've gone on and on about rolling with this crew, the best coworkers anyone could possibly hope to have:
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And living these moments:
So after all this, what was I hoping for when I put those prayer cards in my pocket? Or when I pulled them out? I guess I just wanted to be made whole again. Put back together, for just a while. To the extent it's possible, to feel like the three better men I lost were there with me. It seemed like it was as good a place as any to feel like I'm communicating with them again, instead of being in the echo chamber I've been alone in for almost 16 months.
I have friends who've lost loved ones, and who are blessed to be a lot more perceptive than I am when it comes to experiencing what I'll call (for lack of a better term), "signs." I won't betray their confidence, but a buddy's dear, departed mom had a favorite type of bird. And one of that very species flew into his golf cart and sat with him for minutes. Which seems ornithologically impossible. But he knows what it meant. Another friend's late, beloved mom used to think this one ridiculous type of commercial truck was hilarious. And whenever this friend is grieving the hardest, that ludicrous vehicle seems to appear out of nowhere.
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I wish I had that Shining more than I do. The one incident I can report was the time I went down the beach in Plymouth to pray. And to cry. And saw something I've never witnessed at this spot before or since.
Those house numbers I brought up earlier? Those addresses were 75 and 74 Bald Eagle Road. Make of that what you will. But we are more than just flesh and blood. Our consciousness is not just electrical impulses in our brains. Love is more than just something to make us breed and form social groups to keep us alive. Souls exist. And they're immortal.
On some level, I was probably just reminding myself of that Sunday night. And I did.
So thanks for that, fellas. And for shaping my life the way you did. I owe all this to you. And I'm eternally grateful. But honestly, would two more touchdowns and a couple of Seattle turnovers really been too much to ask for?
Anyway, thanks for reading to the end. I'm sorry this went so long, but I kind of needed to say it.
Call your family.
Go, Pats.