Eagles Fans Decorating Their Parents’ Graves Actually Made Me Feel Something Today
(CNN) Sunday night's semi-destructive revelry was still unfolding on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love when Uber driver and Eagles fan Luis Reyes decided he'd pick up one more fare before heading home.
"He asked me to take him to the cemetery so he can place an Eagles cap and to let his dad know that we finally won," Reyes told CNN.
It was one of untold bittersweet victory celebrations that since Sunday have blurred the line of earthly time and space to include Philly fans who breathed their last long before time ran out on Super Bowl LII.
Full story here.
Usually I just scroll through the news, glancing from story to story, the words going in one ear and out another. I look through tales of love, loss, victory, woe, but all substance takes a back seat to content. This story however, was different. This one struck a nerve. Just scores of fans taking to their parents’ graves, lifelong Eagles fans who never saw the birds do much of anything, and decorating them with jerseys, sharing shots, reading game recaps, and much more. I think this hit me so hard because as I wrote a few days ago, I’ve resigned to the fact that I will never see the Bears win a Super Bowl. I don’t even know if football will still be around when I die, but what started as my worse fear has now just become a stark reality that I accept.
This hit a nerve because I hope, when the Bears win a Super Bowl in 2118, two days after I die at 126 years-old, that my great-great-grandkids will honor my grave in the same way. I imagine them pouring Jim Beam on my freshly dug grave, drape a Brian Urlacher jersey over my headstone, and saying things like, “Don’t know why you told us to do this Pop-Pop, but here you go,” or “Why didn’t you just pick another team?”
“Just shut the fuck up and do it,” my ghost will whisper back to them, and all will be as it should be.
