He Knew the Secret of Life

Pee Wee Reese’s son Mark, a former college baseball star, now a maker of documentary films, wrote this letter to Roger Kahn the week before his father died:

Dear Roger,

The prognosis is not good. The cancer has settled in his brain. PW is often delirious, sometimes delusional. The other day he stared at me with a blank look and said, “All my life I’ve pondered sleep.” This echoed in my mind throughout the day despite my father’s inability to explain his statement.

That night I sat down to dinner with my father for what would more than likely be the last time. [It was.] I thought of all the other times we had sat down to dinner, just another family sitting at the table to break bread and to share the events of the day. I thought of the dinner discussions, some good, some bad; some heated, some mundane. I thought of all those times he missed dinner because he was on the road, or the flight was late, or the game went into extra innings. Regardless of the state of things, I always knew my old man was there, or was at least coming home.

But at this dinner, though he was there, I knew he never would return. From his wheelchair he seemed to study my every move, as if to ask, who is this stranger invading my home? I couldn’t get my breath; it literally felt as though I had been hit in the gut. After excusing myself into my parents’ den, I felt as if the life was being drained from my body, and perhaps it was. As Turgenev said, a boy doesn’t become a man until he loses his father. Maybe this is that process, a kneeing blow to the gut.

So I sat on the floor in the den, trying to regain my breath and composure. It was then I looked up at all the photos of my father that adorned the walls. There he was in all his glory: sliding into second base, standing at the edge of the dugout with Jackie Robinson, fielding a ground ball. Or with his broadcasting partner at CBS, Dizzy Dean. The most important element was the one I took for granted. It graced the pictures. It was his smile. It then dawned on me that my father had a key, a key to the secret of life.

He knew how to enjoy life, and never to question a single second of it. I used to press him and ask why he was not confronting our state of being. Wasn’t there a chance it was all nothingness? Dad would look at me and shake his head, because he knew he possessed the key.

That night I returned to the dinner table. When I sat down beside Dad, we both smiled. Dad now looked at me once again with his eyes of the knowing, as if to relish in this moment together, a moment of being alive, of being awake, even as we both pondered sleep.

Love to all the Kahns,

Mark