My friend and coaching buddy, Joe Miller, had a medical emergency at our kids’ basketball camp Friday morning, and, despite giving him CPR and having the EMT’s come and continue working on him, he could not be revived.
Two days later, I’m just beginning to come out of “crisis mode”, where your focus is on the situation, and then our players and Joe’s family, figuring out who needs to be contacted next. Coming out of crisis mode means the impact of the loss hits you in the gut and your emotions play havoc with your reactions that usually don’t cause a reaction, your need for alone time that, at a moment’s notice transitions to a need for together time, and also your own mortality that you realize is as fragile as that glass vase you’ve been afraid will be accidentally knocked off the counter and shatter into a thousand pieces.
This was my third year as an assistant for Joe on the Liberty High School girls’ basketball staff. We worked well together, enjoyed the humor of situations, shook our heads at the weird things that happened, and the out-of-control people we would sometimes encounter at games. When you’ve shared history, you cherish the retelling of shared experiences.
Both of us were from southern Ohio, he from Lucasville and I from Ironton, two towns less than an hour’s drive apart. We knew similar stories from our neck of the woods. I bought him a book last year about the professional football days of Southern Ohio, when Portsmouth had a team, and Ironton had the Ironton Tanks. Those were pre-NFL days, and we enjoyed the history of the ancient past.
For me to write this blog about Joe is part of my dealing with the grief. I needed to put it into words. It may not be read by many folk, but the “number of readers” has no connection to my walk with his loss.
Pray for the Liberty Lancer girls who were there when he collapsed. The painful ache they are experiencing reveals the specialness of their relationships with their coach. Pray for his family, his wife and three children who are in their young adulthood.
What drew me to join Joe in coaching the Lancers was his character and integrity. I had coached his son back in middle school, so we had a long history of knowing each other and respecting each other. There are coaches who know the game but are tyrants to their players, and there are coaches who have solid relationships with their players but can’t teach the game to save their players. Joe knew the games, loved his players, and was loved by his players. That’s why I said yes when he asked me to join him. And it’s why the pain is intense right now. I don’t have my friend to retell the shared stories with. He’s not there for me to say, “Remember when…”
He will, however, always be remembered.
Words from WW Blog 