Thanks Cougars for the Memory PDF Print E-mail
AF_Puma  |  Thursday, November 30, 2006, 8:28 am
By Jim Vallen
COUGARBLUE

The BYU win over Utah helps brighten an otherwise dismal day for one Cougar fan.
I’m home from an event that I never thought I’d be facing this early in life—the funeral for a granddaughter.

Her name was Lilly Elizabeth and she sojourned on this earth for just over five weeks. That was five weeks longer than we thought we’d have her. She was born on October 18, 2006 and prior to her birth she had been diagnosed with a condition called holoprosenchephaly, which is a birth defect caused by the lack of the forebrain to divide into halves during embryonic development. Our expectation, based on what doctors had told us, was that we were looking at maybe hours of life if she even made it to full-term.

Her father, my son-in-law Michael, a current BYU student, is probably as big a BYU fan as I am. Michael’s father, Tom, works in an administrative position at BYU and had raised his son with full exposure to BYU sports. I saw in Michael’s younger brother’s room the other day memorabilia hanging on the walls from the 1996 Cotton Bowl game where BYU had beaten Kansas State and their parents had taken the whole family to witness one of the greater football teams of all time at BYU.

From the beginning, Lilly was a fighter and the type of character that Coach Bronco Mendenhall would have wanted on his team. She was determined and after battling with her mother through twenty-two hours of labor, without sufficient progression (she knew where it was warm and safe), the doctor decided it was best to deliver her via c-section and mother and father had been moved from the delivery room to the maternity operating room.

When she was born, things didn’t look well and immediately she had problems breathing. Having experienced the birth of five of my seven children, I was surprised to hear of Michael’s description of Lilly’s delivery. It almost seemed like the hospital staff was not expecting her to live much beyond the delivery because they basically wrapped her in a warm blanket and handed her over to her father. As she struggled to breath regularly he handed her over to her mother, my daughter Emily, and it was a mother’s voice that seemed to jump-start little Lilly and put her in a fighting mode. With her mother’s whispers ringing in her ear, Lilly began to battle for life and begun sucking down air like it was in short supply. Immediately her somewhat purple color turned pink.

Without too much more attention from a hospital staff that appeared to be attempting to give us as much time as possible with our new family member, she was brought back down to the delivery room where Lilly was passed to both sets of grandparents and many aunts and uncles as we thought we were saying hello and goodbye all in one event. In the LDS tradition and ordinance, she was given a name and blessing once again with the thought that our time with her was limited.

Well, she lived through that day and soon days turned into a week and then additional weeks and a month. She battled for her life over her thirty-nine days that she was with us.

Lilly officially entered that pre-prep BYU fan phase by dawning an official BYU Cougar blue “onesie” and having pictures taken for sacred spots in the family scrapbook.

During Rivalry Week, Lilly came down with some congestion that affected her breathing and ultimately her appetite, which weakened her significantly. While Michael, Emily and Lilly had remained behind in Utah, I had taken most of the rest of the family to Napa, California for Thanksgiving at their grandma’s place and had anticipated watching the BYU vs. Utah game there on Saturday before returning home.

Then Friday, Lilly turned for the worse and it looked like the inevitable was upon us. We were making a tourist’s round down Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square in downtown San Francisco when we received the call that if we wanted to see Lilly again in mortality that we had better return home to Utah. Some family members from California took my wife directly to the Oakland airport to board a plane back to Utah while the rest of the family headed back to Napa to pack the car and drive all-night the twelve hours back to home to hopefully see Lilly one more time.

I drove all night long while the others slept. I wasn’t too conscious of following posted speeds as I hoped that any officer picking me up on their radar might be persuaded to not ticket a grandfather trying to get home for one last visit with his granddaughter. Besides, I think the ticket would have been worth that opportunity if Lilly would just hold up.

When I arrived at the home of her fraternal grandparents in Pleasant Grove on Saturday morning at about 9:00 AM, we were in time to hold our precious little angel as she battled for life.

This was Rivalry Game day and after some very cherished time with Lillie, I needed to get some sleep after driving the whole night through if I wanted to be somewhat cognizant by game time.

It was kind of a tough situation and all with the game approaching and the struggles Lilly was going through. Her parents had long ago decided that they would not opt for medical “heroics” to elongate Lilly’s life just to prolong her suffering for their sake. I agreed with their decision, as did the rest of the family.

I was awoken at the beginning of the game and Lilly was still with us and again I had a further opportunity to cuddle the mortal body of my valiant granddaughter.

All morning Lilly had gone from moments where she had quit breathing and we thought the end had come only to see her once again battle back after going longer than a minute or so without breathing to somewhat regular breathing.

She was there with us as the Cougars battled the Utes through the first quarter and then onto the second.

Just after halftime arrived though, as many of the family members had scrambled for halftime snacks and their traditional start to bringing out the Christmas decorations, Lilly, while cradled in her father’s arms, quietly and unobtrusively slipped away to that better care that her family had sought for and hoped for her based on our religious beliefs.

Suddenly football took a back seat for me and that says a lot if you knew how big of a BYU fan I am.

Still there was no hurry among us to have Lilly taken from us and we all took turns saying that final goodbye on the last day of her mortal life.

I think a lot of what happened next had to do with the fact that we knew from the start that we were on borrowed time with Lilly. Her father, Michael, wanted to see the remainder of the game. I think we all paused and wondered if such a request was okay as we too were interested in the outcome of the biggest game of the year for our beloved Cougars. We had to await the arrival of the hospice nurse anyhow.

It was cute and probably only an experience that a father can truly appreciate when Michael came to me and said, “Dad, I kind of want to finish the game and Emily thinks we should probably take Lilly on over to the funeral home now. What should I do?” At that point it had to be well into the third quarter of the game, which to that point, had not been turned on again. My advice came out of years of married life as I told him, “Michael, from experience, I’d advise you to do whatever your wife wants you to do.”

That probably wasn’t the answer he was looking for, but he was willing to do what she wanted him to. In the end though, she wasn’t willing to give up so quickly her first born and he was granted the time to finish out The Game.

Many people would probably think such a move was silly and not proper, as they would describe football as just an inconsequential pastime. Maybe sports fans are just different. Right or wrong, who’s to know? The question is pushed around asking how many people would say on their death bed that they had wished that they had worked one more day of life as opposed to having spent even one more day celebrating life with family members. I can honestly say from my perspective though that I don’t think I would ever discount any of my sporting events, one day when I’m brought to death’s door. because sports does have a way of bringing family members together in a contest of wills and skill. That is probably why I’ve enjoyed sports so much in my life because they have always revolved around various members of my family enjoying the event with me—win or lose. These sporting events just reek of traditions involving the family that seems to be well remembered even as my children have become adults and have started families of their own.

As Michael began to watch the game again, he quickly became aware that the Cougars had continued their downslide they had begun in the second quarter of the game and now were down 17-14 later in the third quarter. Michael began to fret even more as Utah scored their 24th uncontested point in a row at almost the end of the third quarter and now BYU was down by multiple scores and the way things were progressing it didn’t look good.

Michael just kept saying aloud, “Come on Cougars, you can’t do this to me on the day I lost my daughter!” It was obvious that he didn’t want the further memory of this day scared by another upset to the dreaded rival that the University of Utah was for a BYU fan. When you have already sustained one setback, you surely don’t search for another, but you search to find some happiness to balance out the bad. In my religious beliefs, I had never, ever prayed for divine assistance for my team to win a game. My understanding involves the belief that God is impartial of all sporting contests because he has sons and daughters on both sides of the ball. But I thought to say a prayer anyhow as my heart was just breaking to see my son-in-law looking so frantic for some bright spot on this sad and eventful day. Whether foolish or not, it just wasn’t going to be a fond memory for him of this day if the Cougars went down to defeat for the fifth straight time.

Maybe I was no better than Tevye in the play Fiddler On the Roof, where he reflects on how much he wishes he had a small fortune ("If I Were a Rich Man") and in the lyrics of the song asks, if God were to make him rich, would it break some huge eternal plan? My prayer was the same that if it didn’t break some eternal plan, couldn’t the Cougars be blessed enough to realize their potential and pull out a win? To win a game for a father that had just lost his first-born? If it wouldn’t upset that plan for some other deserving person, couldn’t this humble prayer be answered for the sake of this aching father?

I personally was suffering too much turmoil to be able to watch BYU be upset and deal with the death of my granddaughter. I sat in an adjacent room with my wife cuddling our little angel as other family members arrived. Those family members that were already there would come in and out from joining Michael as he paced back and forth in frustration watching the game and take another opportunity to embrace Lilly once again. Michael himself would pop in and out and it was obvious that the bottom line was that what had occurred with his daughter was much more important than the outcome of that game. But his hope of a Cougar win was so much present also.

Then suddenly the Cougars were battling back. Early in the fourth quarter tight end Jonny Harline made an amazing catch in the end zone for a four-yard touchdown. This was followed a bit later by more shouts of celebration as the game now had just a little more than three minutes to go in the fourth quarter and the Cougars had scored again and were on top now 27-24.

When Utah marched down the field and scored again with 1:19 to play in the game, you would have thought that someone had ripped out Michael’s heart along with all the rest of ours. It’s hard to explain what we were feeling with one hole in our hearts already because of Lilly and now the prospects of another as Utah somehow had found the way again to beat BYU. I just kept petitioning, “Please?”

That final sixty-nine seconds seemed to me to last forever. I kept hearing Michael in the other room repeating how terrible it was to have this upset tagged onto this already difficult day. But then I kept hearing some roars of excitement as I imagined that John Beck & Company were marching down the field for one more attempt at either fame or despair.

When John Beck scrambled around for that last play that went on for several seconds, even after the game clock had expired, and ended with Jonny Harline catching the final score on an eleven-yard pass as he fell to his knees and thus winning the game, shouts just went wild in the house. With my emotions already just hanging out there from the departure of Lilly and still suffering from physical and emotional fatigue, I just burst into sobbing tears of joy as Michael emerged from that room probably energized for the first time that day and I realized a prayer had been answered. I realized that this day wouldn’t be tagged further with the horrible memory of Utah once again upsetting our BYU Cougars. We would have survived and life surely would not have ended, but I don't know if I can adequately describe how uplifting that win had been for all of us. The thought ever that the end of any sporting contest would ever result in my bursting into tears would have seemed so foreign to me had it not happened in this way I described.

Maybe we are just silly football fans but BYU’s win over their archrival, the University of Utah, just made that day seem more manageable to me—at least emotionally. Someone had tried to make the situation a little lighter in the third quarter when things looked their darkest that maybe our little Lilly had checked out with BYU on top at half-time 14-10 just so she could say that she had gone out with the Cougars on top. Wonderfully for us, that wasn’t the end of the story.

It was hard to do what we, Lilly’s family, had to do today in laying to rest the mortal remains of our daughter, granddaughter and niece. I had never experienced such a loss and neither had any other of our two families. Wrong or right though, I am thankful that in beating Utah, the BYU Cougars won one for a very deserving fan. “Win one for the Gipper” is a much-repeated phrase related to football, but this game will go down in my memory forever as the time the Cougars won one for a very deserving father and ardent BYU fan. Thanks Cougar for this special memory.
 
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