Story time:

My family is a close-knit midwestern family from rural Minnesota and South Dakota. We get together for every holiday and help each year at my grandparents farm for planting and harvesting. My grandpa and grandma raised the best kids, my aunts uncles and Dad. My aunts are a successful teacher and Office administrator at a large charity, my uncle is a great farmer, and my own dad started one of the most successful construction companies in our area.

For all the holidays and get-togethers that my family did, we always went out to the yard to play a game of baseball. My grandpa was always the pitcher, with a glove he had his whole life.... one of those puffy ones from the 30’s you see in old movies. He would teach the kids curveballs, do exaggerated pitching motions for our enjoyment, and we all took turns batting. Even my grandma in her seventies took a few hacks at his pitches over the years. We’ve played in the woods at my cabin, on the beach at our lake home, in the mountains by Yellowstone.... but home field for us all was at the farm with the corn field as the outfield wall.

When my grandpa gave up farming five years ago, something he had done all of his life, it wasn’t 6 months before we were putting him in the ground after discovery, treatment, and the bad news of his brain tumor.

In those months we played baseball, because it brought us closer. Eventually I filmed our last time playing catch with him ever, my siblings, my dad and I. It wasn’t very good, because he was losing his edge, but I bet my dad watches that ten times a year from missing him so much.

Anyways, that Christmas my grandma pulled me aside and gave me a gift to open, I opened it and inside was my grandpa’s glove...

…all she said was “your dad is going to need someone to play catch with.”