The Last Good Season

The vitamin bottles lined up on his nightstand like silent accusations — D3 for bones, B12 for energy, omega-3 for a heart that had already betrayed him twice. Eric watched his father's hands shake as he organized them, the same hands that had taught him to grip a baseball when he was six, knuckling a curveball that nobody else could master.

"You're not eating," Eric said, gesturing at the untouched dinner tray.

His father looked up, eyes clouded with something beyond cataracts. "Your mother used to make these Sundays. Before she got sick. Before everything." He reached for his water glass, knocked it over. Eric caught it before it could spill, but not before seeing the tremor in his father's wrist.

The hospice nurse had mentioned cutting his hair. The white strands that had thickened defiantly after chemotherapy now lay limp against his pillow, a mane that had once made women turn their heads in the seventies. Eric had always hated that his father's hair stayed full while his own receded like a embarrassed tide.

"She hated baseball," his father said suddenly, apropos of nothing. "Did I ever tell you that? She said it was a boy's game, meaningless. But she came to every college game. Every single one."

Eric felt something crack in his chest. He remembered those Sundays, the ritual of it all — the vitamin supplements his mother had laid out for him before games, the way she braided his hair before away tournaments, pretending she didn't care about the sport that defined their family.

"She loved the vitamin C," Eric said softly. "Said it kept you from getting sick before championships."

"She loved you," his father corrected. "There's a difference."

Outside, summer ended. The baseball glove Eric had brought, still smelling of leather and nostalgia, sat untouched on the chair. His father would never grip it again. Some seasons end before the ninth inning. Some stories don't get their endings.

"Take the vitamins," his father said, pushing the bottles toward him. "You're forty now. Time to start listening."

Eric pocketed them, understanding at last that love is sometimes measured in vitamin regimens and baseball games attended, in the ways we keep each other alive when we want most to give up.