This article from The Athletic gutted me. Good read. Love your kids every chance you get. Sounds like there is a golf scramble in August in Glen Oakes to raise money for the charity.
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When Kettler worked for the Kansas City Royals before switching to college hoops, All-Star first baseman Mike Sweeney gave him a ball from Opening Day. He still has it. He kept it, he says, with “every intention of playing catch with my son with that ball.”
This is a familiar, painful feeling in the Kettlers’ daily life. They contemplate unfulfilled wishes and missed milestones. They remember happier times, their smiling son playing with Brynley, his older sister. They continue the tradition of putting up Jaxen’s little Christmas tree every holiday season, decorating it with family ornaments. They keep photos everywhere, images that make them smile, that make them laugh, that make them cry. Kim and Brynley pray to Jaxen every night. Before Jaxen’s diagnosis, Andy used to tell Kim that bedtime was the best time of the day, because it meant they had gotten through another good day as a family — the kids were in bed and everybody was safe and sound. Now that time comes, and Andy isn’t always sure what to say.
“When you go through stuff like that, you hope on a lot of different levels that maybe you can help and/or inspire people,” Andy says. “There’s a lot of things that got lost in him getting sick. It makes your marriage hard. It makes dealing with family hard. It makes going to work hard. It makes relationships hard. It changes everything. The word I use is
try: Try to combat those things as best we can, but also understand the whole situation, so that when we can help other people, we understand the magnitude of all of it. It doesn’t go away. You try to find a way to live through it.”
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