DMN: Remembering My Nephew

DMN Essay
Thursday, October 19, 2006

By MIKKI KIRBY / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Seven years ago I assured my nephew that I would write an article about him. He was set to make an impact on the high school football field.
At 12, Blake had the physique of a teenager. And a football was always under his arm.
"You stay on track, and I'm going to write a front-page story on you one day," I said, laughing and messing his hair.
It was the last thing I ever said to him.
Four years passed before I would see him again, this final time looking at his lifeless, hulking 17-year-old body draped in his football jersey, lying in a casket.
He had been riding in a car with friends on their way to a party after a football game. The car flipped over. There was no bad weather that day. No alcohol involved. It was one of those freak accidents.
Hovering over his corpse, I apologized to him for never fulfilling my promise.
When my sister called me last October, two weeks after the second anniversary of his death, she wanted to share stories. We sat over lunch, and we cried.
She shared incredible stories of the compassion she has felt from the community of Mesquite, the 100 or so kids who lined her lawn in a candlelight vigil the night of the anniversary.
She wanted to share with me the impact I had on him.
"He always said, 'I'm getting a football scholarship to the Florida State University. And I'm going live with my Aunt Mikki,' " she said, clutching his picture.
Distance prevented me from making the time to spend with him. I was in Florida, then Colorado; he was in Texas. She told me how attached he was to an FSU baseball hat I had given him when he was 12. He was so attached to that hat that when it fell apart from wear, he cut out the logo and kept it on his dresser.
"I told him when I gave him that hat I expected him to be on the FSU field in 2004," I told my sister. "I told him I would write about his skills but also about what an amazing kid I knew he was."
She told me, "It's time for you to write that story."
But when he died the fall of his junior year, that story lost its life. That story wouldn't have expressed the story of who he was.
Sure, I suspect I would have written about the number of tackles he had, his work ethic on and off the field and how each of his teammates at Mesquite Horn High School looked up to him.
Now the story can be told at the expense of his precious life.
Blake Wayne Lindsey was so well-liked that close to 2,500 people crowded the funeral home on Oct. 20, 2003. A sea of red football jerseys trembled and wept.
Blake was so compassionate and friendly that each week someone leaves a note, a flower or a memento on his grave still three years later. He was so full of love that friends call his mother on Mother's Day, holidays and his birthday to express empathy for her loss.
He made such an impact on adults and teenagers that messages continue to be left on www.legacy .com, a memorial site.
One entry from a former coach reads, "Friday night football is here, and with it I feel you around me. Your love of the game goes through me more and more."
I'm sure in his innocence he had no idea the impact he had on people who crossed his path. I only wish I knew what that hat would have meant for his life and college football today.
Mikki Kirby is a Dallas freelance writer.