What We Leave Behind

The baseball cap felt alien in my hands—blue wool, sweat-stained brim, the Mets logo faded to ghost-gray. It had been eight years since David's funeral, and I'd kept this hat in the back of my closet like a relic of a saint.

"Mom? You coming?"

I looked up. My son stood at the door, his baseball uniform crisp, his face so much like his father's it still made my chest ache. But the hair—that was all mine. Dark, unruly, falling over his forehead.

"Be right there," I said.

The chemotherapy had taken my hair three months ago. Now it grew back soft, foreign, a stranger's fuzz against my scalp. I'd stopped wearing the wigs. Let them see, I'd decided. Let them see what survival looked like.

The baseball field smelled like cut grass and concession stand popcorn. Parents lined the bleachers, their collective anxiety a palpable thing. I'd sat here countless Sundays with David, his arm around my shoulders, his laugh low against my ear.

Then something moved beyond the outfield fence—a fox, russet coat gleaming, yellow eyes fixed on something I couldn't see. It moved with such purpose, such terrifying clarity.

The phrase came unbidden: *crazy like a fox.* David used to say that about me. Usually when I'd done something irrational, something driven by instinct he couldn't parse.

"You okay, Mom?" My son touched my arm.

I realized I was crying, silent tears tracking down my cheeks. The fox vanished into the woods, a flash of red disappearing into green.

"I'm okay," I said, and for the first time in months, it wasn't a lie. "I'm just glad to be here."

I left David's hat on the bleacher seat. Let someone else find it. Let someone else wonder who it belonged to. I had my own life to live now—soft new hair and all.