✊🏻💙
Grief is funny.
You’re going along, feeling pretty good. Nothing in the immediate future to anticipate as a stumbling block.

Then you get the email.

The email from CBS Sports.
“Kolette, Brackets are Back!🏀”

That was two weeks ago.
March Madness.
It’s a thing at the Hall house.
Brackets were filled out.
Multiple TVs stayed on so Jason could watch the games from room to room.
We’ve gone from hand-drawing a bracket for the apartment wall back in our early days of marriage to just doing it all online.

Jason ran a pool every year.
“Much Madness” was the name of it.
He wanted everyone to do it. Even if they hated basketball or thought that they would lose, he wanted you part of the group.

Coleman and Jason got right on it.
I usually waited till the last day to fill out my bracket. Going with my gut about who the upsets were going to be.
Picking winners based on nothing but a feeling and a tip or two from Jason.
Then we printed out our brackets and watched as we endured losses or rose in the Much Madness pool rankings.

🏀🏀🏀
Three brackets sitting on the kitchen counter.

Last year the tournament was a mere 45 minutes away in Salt Lake City.
Jason let Coleman ditch school to watch games back-to-back-to-back.
Feeling a little left out, I rode the train down and caught the last half of the day.

What if I would have stayed home?
What if I had ignored the nudge to make it happen?
What if I had given in to the thought that it was too much trouble to drop everything and just go?
What if I would have missed this totally awesome photo opp?😍

That email from CBS Sports.
I knew that a link to “Much Madness” was in that email.
Along with a familiar, sudden “whoosh” squeezing on my heart.💙

March Madness has baggage for me.
Images in my mind.
Memories from the last 28 years.
I’ve been feeling it for weeks.
And I even kinda like it.
March Madness was always fun with Jason, the superfan of life.

A lot is different this year.
No brackets. No games. No tournament.
No basketball energy flowing through the month of March. No thrill of the inevitable upset. No buzzer-beaters or heartbreakers. No deafening cheers from a fan-filled arena. No champion crowned.

And no Jason.
But that’s ok. We can do this.
Grief. Coronavirus. Missing things we love. All of it.
We can totally do this.👊🏻💙