She Was a Rugby Mom Like The Rest Of Us

And then she was gone

She was a rugby mom like the rest of us. She stood on the sidelines watching her son the same way the rest of us watched our sons — hands over our eyes, fingers parted just enough to be able to see.

Rugby is so tough — as evidenced by the sport’s tagline “No helmets. No pads. Just balls.” — that it’s nothing short of terrifying to watch the child you’ve spent your life protecting hit that pitch and the opposing team unprotected. Maybe it’s different for dads, but for moms, that fear bonds us.

At the beginning, none of us knew Wendy that well but, huddled next to each other (and occasionally hiding behind each other’s backs when the fingers over the eyes thing wasn’t cutting it), united in pride for our sons (“Go Doug! Go Mikey!”), fear they’d get hurt (“Who’s down? Is that Will? Cuyler?”), and the delectable Bloody Mary’s my husband Robert whipped up and served surreptitiously, we were the Mount Saint Mary’s University Men’s Rugby moms.

More importantly, we were friends.

And then she got sick.

Esophageal cancer.

At a match shortly after her diagnosis, Wendy turned to Coco, our fearless and hysterically funny head rugby mom whose husband coached all our kids until, surprisingly and not so surprisingly, they each ended up playing for Mount St Mary’s and said –

All I want is to see Doug graduate.

She got sicker and we didn’t see her for a long while. A few of us tried to visit but, God bless her husband, when he felt Wendy needed rest, no one was allowed in.

I don’t blame him one bit; he knew we’d hide our Bloody Mary fixins and snacks under our coats and in our bags and tucked in our bras and then God only knows what kind of rugby mom mayhem would have ensued.

But then one Saturday, out of the blue, Wendy was there, at a match, not just cheering the boys on, but having made the most delicious Chinese food for them to enjoy (and us to sneak tastes of).

Wendy was Chinese, her husband Irish, their sons kind and handsome as the day is long.

It wasn’t but a few weeks after that Saturday that she went into the hospital for the last time. Her son Doug came home from the Mount. His best friend Will did too.

Doug, Will, Coco, all of Wendy’s dearest friends, her husband Steve, their older son Steven, converged in her hospital room. Steve wanted Wendy to rest. He wanted her to be done with the pain and to be able to let go in peace without others around her crying, praying, and holding on.

I wasn’t there, but I heard. Steve wanted Wendy to go unencumbered. Yet no one would leave.

At two o’clock on a Friday afternoon, I got a text from Coco. Beautiful, loving, effervescent, petite-as-my-pinky but larger-than-life Wendy was gone.

My heart broke then, and it breaks now writing about it.

Wendy was light, and joy, and goodness, and she was so damn funny. She adored her sons and when she looked at Steve, you could see that even after all their years together, she was still smitten with him.

She loved us rugby moms and we loved her. And now, she’s gone. Taken by cancer too fast, too soon, too young.

Obviously, I’ve experienced loss. Painful, heart wrenching, terrible loss. Loss that was expected, and loss that came out of the clear blue sky, and I still can’t believe that I’ll never see Wendy again.

She’ll never again hide behind me on the sidelines, giggling and watching Doug through her fingers right up until the moment he’d catch that ball like his hands were made of glue and take off down the pitch for the try.

You should’ve seen her then, racing down the sideline with him, screaming her support, watching her baby score.

I will never see her do that again and, far worse, neither will her husband and sons.

I just don’t get it. There are so may truly terrible people in this world that — forgive me — deserve truly terrible deaths.

But Wendy? My husband, Stu? My brother, David? What could possibly be the reason for their lives to be cut short?

There is no reason.

In some cosmic spot they rolled the dice and Wendy lost. Stu and David lost, too. Victims don’t get to sit at the table and place their bets. The game is going on someplace else without them.

How long before the cosmos plays the hand that determines my fate?

Wendy, I’m so sorry we never got to know each other better, beyond the rugby sidelines, but I want you to know that I loved you.

All the Mount St. Mary’s University Men’s Rugby moms loved you.

Now and forever, you have my word, when we’re watching the boys through our fingers, you’ll be in our hearts (which, frankly, might be a safer place to watch from), and when your baby gets the ball and he’s flying down the field to score, we’ll be running along the sidelines with him, screaming your support.