by Debora Morris

Created on: April 15, 2009

"Mom, do you think they play baseball in heaven?"

I was in the kitchen stirring macaroni into a pot of boiling water when my ten-year old son burst through the back door and asked me this question, his chocolate brown eyes illuminated with such seriousness that it brought tears to my eyes. I tossed the wooden spoon into the sink and cupped his sweaty face between my hands.

"Of course they play baseball in heaven," I answered. "Every time you hear a crack of lightning, that's the sound of the bat smacking the baseball. The thunder is the roar of the crowd cheering when an angel hits a home run. Matt, honey, are you worried about Grandpa? Because if you are, don't be. He's just a little tired right now from the flu he had last week."

That was the middle of May, when lilacs were filling the back yard with sweet promises of long, summer days active with softball practice and Indians games, swimming lessons, and bicycle rides through the valley. Matt's birthday present, an official Major League pitcher's glove, was hiding in the back of my bedroom closet. His eleventh birthday was May 31. The party had to be canceled.

I thought that Matt had caught the flu from his grandpa. The two were inseparable; Matt's dad had died when Matt was five. Every evening after dinner when had the flu; Matt rode his bike the five blocks to Grandpa's house, where the two of them sat side-by-side on the couch in front of the TV, cheering on the Indians. So when Matt began running a temperature, I kept him home from school, made cherry Knox Blocks to soothe his sore throat, and read to him from his favorite Harry Potter book I selfishly indulged my son with my complete attention and assurance that he would soon be well.

"You couldn't have known, Ann," Ted Harvey, our family doctor, said, as we watched the nurses lift Matt from the gurney onto the hospital bed. "Sometimes symptoms act so much like the common flu that even we doctors find it difficult to diagnose leukemia."

A lab technician placed a band-aid in the crook of Matt's right arm. An IV pumped medication into his left arm to help bring down the temperature. Outside, a late spring storm was looming. Matt had his face turned toward the window, watching the lightning flash across the sky. Inside the nucleus of whirling thoughts going through my head, I heard him ask again, "Mom, do you think they play baseball in heaven?"

It was then I realized that by some enigmatic force, my son had known he was dying when he asked me this same question

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