Remembering A Smile

How do you make sense of something that doesn’t make sense? One of the things we learn as young children is the principle of causation. You know; touch a hot stove and you get burned. I learned that I couldn’t swallow ball bearings, or jump down a flight of stairs, or climb up a chest of drawers. The results were never good.

But sometimes, causation gets thrown out of the window. Sometimes bad things happen and there is no real explanation. There is no answer to the question, “why?” There is no level of understanding to be found. And that is hard to accept. We all want to know why this thing has happened.

The thing about those really difficult “why’s” is that you can never really prepare for them. Sometimes you can see them playing out and still not be ready. We always think there is a tomorrow that we’ll have to face. But eventually, that tomorrow becomes today.

My family has had to face two of those “today’s” in the last 10 weeks. I lost my dad on October 1, 2021. He had been sick for over a year. He had his ups and downs but he had been sick. Yet, I still thought I had time. The morning he died, I was headed to my parents’ house to stay the weekend. I knew about the possibility. But I didn’t accept it. I kept thinking, “we still have tomorrow.”

A few months after my dad got sick, my uncle was diagnosed with the same brutal disease as him, albeit in a different form. A disease that we had very little experience with as a family took hold of two of the most important/influential men in my life. There were three men in my wedding party; my dad, my brother, and my Uncle Greg. And within months of each other, dad and Greg were both facing the same difficult battle.

In June of 2021, for my dad’s birthday, we gathered together for what would be the last time as a family. Dad was in good spirits. Greg was there; tired but laughing and talking about fun memories. We took this last photo that I’ll hold dear for the rest of my life. I look at it often. I remember it vividly.

In 3 short months, we lost my dad. Ten weeks later, we have lost Greg. Selfishly; I ask why? Why did we lose two great men in the same season? Why did they have to go through what they went through? Why did this have to happen? I’ll never have an answer to any of these questions.

I can only try to honor their memory in the way I walk through this life moving forward. I wrote about how important dad was to me HERE. If you haven’t read it, I ask you to do that – just to understand what kind of a man I was blessed with as a father.

As for Greg, though he was my uncle, he was sometimes like a big brother to me. He was closer to my age than he was to his own brothers. He was about 15 years younger than my dad and only 9 years older than me. He was still in high school when I was about to head to middle school. When most kids were looking up to high schoolers they didn’t know, I had Greg.

He was a star in baseball and football. He was a great basketball player. He was funny. He was tough. He would let you think you were going to beat him at something and then turn it on at the last minute. He taught me how to race bikes around my granny’s house. He taught me wrestling moves on the trampoline. And he even tried to convince me that Auburn was better than Georgia.

Greg was the unintentional reason that I met Alicia for the first time. He was the head of the city recreational fields and had me making some extra cash as an umpire while I was in high school. And my wife, as I’ve written about before, was almost tossed from a game for arguing with me about being out at first base. I didn’t know her before then. We would start dating a year or so later.

I remember going to my first men’s softball game when I was about 15. He played for the “Dodge Boys” with several of the guys from his high school team and I don’t remember them losing very often. Like my dad and Uncle Speedy, Greg knew how to handle himself on a baseball field. I worked scoreboards, umpired, and played bat boy for some of those men’s teams and I know it’s where my passion for weekend softball came from.

Greg loved his high school alma mater like me too. He played football at Mitchell-Baker where he won “Best Hands” one year as a wide receiver. When he graduated, he wore the mascot gear (a big eagle) for a couple of years. In the late 90’s, we started doing the stats for the team and traveled together all over the state of Georgia for a few years.

We watched the coaches lose their minds in Fitzgerald. We experienced elation at Greene-Talieferro. We experienced heartbreak at Cedartown after watching a 12-0 season. We watched one of the craziest plays ever in Early County that we laughed about the last time we talked. We really did experience it all on those Friday Nights. I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world. And I’ll never see a Mitchell County game the same way again.

We saw our share of Eagles Basketball too. We went to Macon every year the Eagles made the Final Four during the 90’s, which was a lot. We saw them win a State Title and we saw them not make the playoffs. Alicia was with us the night he got a chicken sandwich from Wendy’s in Perry. We got about 10 miles up I-75 when he thought he bit into a cold tomato. Turns out it was an uncooked chicken breast. Salmonella was no laughing matter; but we laughed.

I watched the 1993 Suns/Bulls finals at his house. We pulled for the Suns because Barkley was from Auburn. I watched the A’s in the World Series at his house because he loved “The Bash Brothers”. I stayed all night to watch the George Bush/Al Gore election and one of the last things I said to him was, “we have a developing situation in Broward County.”

I played softball on the same field in Baker County with Greg the last time he played. I was at first and he was at second. He demolished his achilles and hung em up after that night. I kneeled over him to check on him. The guy I watched from the dugout when I was 14 had played his last grounder with me on the field beside him 25 years later.

We gathered on Sundays at my parents house to watch NASCAR. We all had our drivers and we were relentless with each other. Dad was an Earnhardt guy. Greg liked Gordon. My guy was Tony Stewart. My mom liked the Labonte brothers, and Alicia was a Sterling Marlin fan. We all put our $5 on the TV Stand at the beginning of the race with the driver who finished highest winning the pot. We really bashed each other during those races.

But if I had to pick one memory that stands out more than any others, it would be the 1997 Auburn/Tennessee SEC Championship. Greg asked me to go with him and I was excited for a few reasons; although neither of those teams are on my favorite list. First, I had never been to an SEC Championship Game. I was only 20 at the time and wasn’t traveling around to major sporting events. Second, I had the chance to watch Peyton Manning play. And finally, it was a trip with Greg so it was a no-brainer.

We got a hotel in downtown Atlanta and took a fairly short cab ride to the dome. Our first issue arose pretty quickly. We found out the tickets we had at the top row of the lower section didn’t have physical seats. We had a spot that was actually for wheelchairs. We would wind up sitting in metal folding chairs at the top of the section.

The game was exciting, with Tennessee winning 30-29. Auburn had several chances during the game but couldn’t quite close the deal. That’s when Greg coined the nickname for Karsten Bailey; “No Hands”. He had some critical drops in the game and anytime he said “No Hands” over the years, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

After the game, we decided to take the Marta back to the downtown area where our hotel was. It was my first experience and was quite a ride with hundreds of drunk college football fans. When we got off of the Marta, we walked and we walked and we walked. Remember, there were no cell phones with GPS back then. I had zero experience in Atlanta and just knew we were staying in a Holiday Inn.

After we walked in circles for what felt like an hour, we finally gave up and picked up a cab at a red light. We told the driver that we were going to the Holiday Inn. He took an immediate right at the light and stopped, about 20 yards from where he picked us up. He turned around to Greg and said, “that’ll be 8 bucks Holmes.” A 30 second cab ride that took us 20 yards was $8 (in 1997). When I tell you we laughed about that 20 years later; believe me, we got a lot of miles out of that story.

I am blessed to have these memories of Greg. We spent a lot of time together over the years. We experienced a lot of laughs and a lot of sadness over sports together. He was there on stage with me at my wedding. He was there at my graduation for me. He was there with me on the softball field when we were old men.

And he’ll be with me forever in my heart. I’ll never understand why he’s gone at 53. I’ll never understand why my dad left just 2 months before him. I don’t know how somebody is supposed to feel after experiencing this kind of loss in such a short period of time. I’m sad, I’m anxious, I’m reflective, and sometimes I’m just lucky to feel any emotion at all.

I know I’m not the only one. Everybody in my family is dealing with this in their own way. My mom is facing it. My granny is facing it. Brothers, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles, Nieces, and Nephews are facing it. Greg has a daughter and son that are going through the same thing I have been going through. We are all facing this moment with each other but it’s hard not to feel alone in it at times too.

I am just thankful I had the life I had with them. I am thankful God gave me the family he gave me. I couldn’t have had a better father than Dewey Shiver. And there could never be another Greg Shiver either. I’ll see his smile forever. He had the biggest smile. Somehow, we will go on. We will never forget; but we will go on.

J-Dub