I check my email. I scroll and delete, scroll and delete, scanning for a human connection amongst the myriad subject titles imploring me to spend my money. After deleting a few dozen, I come across one titled “Regarding Michael Lilienheim.”
I freeze.
Memories and emotions immediately and rapidly swirl through my mind (I’m 4-years-old, I’m 6, I’m 11...) in the moments of anxious hesitation before I open the email to see what’s inside.
Michael and I grew up together on Fairview Road in Glencoe, Illinois, in the 1970s. He was my neighbor, my close friend, and my athletic rival. We lived through so much together but hadn’t seen each other in over 40 years.
Over those years, I thought about Michael. Early on, I considered calling him. Later, it became an occasional internet search, but I never followed through. Though Michael would pop into my mind throughout my adult life, as my family grew and I became busier, those pop-ins became fewer and farther between.
I finally open the email and read it. It’s from Michael’s social worker who informs me that Michael is sick, has been in the hospital frequently over the past year, and has a low chance of recovering. He writes that Michael told him many stories of our childhood in their sessions over the years and asks if he can give my contact information to Michael’s sister, Irene. I respond, thanking him for reaching out and encouraging him to forward my information to Irene. As I click send, I feel my world tilting a bit.
_________
Irene writes back two days later.
"Michael talked of you so often, of all the great times you had together." She shares a brief history of Michael's challenges throughout his adult life and tells of his recent decline.
A little over a week later, I receive a second email, "We plan to come to town this week and would love to see you. Are you free sometime on Saturday? We could have coffee, and I would know by then whether you can visit the hospital."
So...I may move from reliving pleasant childhood experiences in the comfort of my head to a real-life, face-to-face hospital room meeting. I run the potential visit through my mind, unable to wrap my head around the juxtaposition of youth and age, health and sickness, fortune and misfortune.
I recall the last time I saw Michael. He and I were in our early 20s, playing basketball, one-on-one, in his driveway. Now it feels like that kid playing basketball in that driveway holds an invitation to step into a hospital room 40 years in the future and visit an old friend as he lay dying.
_________
If I haven't seen Michael in 40 years, that means I also haven't seen Irene in at least that long, yet we recognize one another when we make eye contact in the hotel lobby. Irene is 14 years older, so she and I have few shared experiences. Still, we know each other's families, childhood homes, and neighbors. So we sit in a hotel restaurant booth and tell stories from our pasts. I reminisce about all the sports Michael and I played with our Glencoe friends.
"Which sports did you play?" she asked.
"All of them," I respond, "Whatever the season was, that's what we played." Touch football in Shelton Park, basketball in our driveways, whiffle ball in the front yard, and street hockey on the tennis courts. We played softball and tennis. We went bowling. We competed in everything, and no one competed harder than Michael.
I share a lasting and vivid memory of Michael at play…
It's a rainy day, and we are playing touch football at Shelton Park. There are puddles of various sizes all over the field, so as we run, we create small splashes with our steps. We play four-on-four. A quarterback and three receivers are on offense, and a rusher and three defenders are on defense. Michael is a receiver and sets up wide on one side of the ball. I'm defending someone else on the opposite side. The ball is hiked.
I can hear soppy steps as we attempt to maneuver. I defend my guy until I see the quarterback look in Michael's direction, rear back, and fire it long. I slow down, turn, track the ball's high arc, and see Michael running full speed in a straight line. I look back and forth from the ball's trajectory to Michael running. I quickly recognize that the only way Michael can make the catch is by diving and landing in a huge puddle in the right corner of the end zone.
If he wants to make the catch, it's unavoidable, and Michael always wants to make the catch. There is no hesitation. From a full-speed run, Michael launches his body, becomes parallel to the ground, stretches out his arms, and fully extends his hands and fingers. The ball lands in those outstretched hands, and he pulls it in right before he does a belly flop and slides through the puddle, firmly grasping the ball as water sprays. Touchdown!
Michael pops up. We all laugh and point at Michael's drenched body. The group chooses to laugh, so I laugh with them, but inside, I am amazed.
Only one kid in that game was capable and willing to make a catch like that.
Irene smiles at the end of this story.
When we weren't competing, we were watching competition: Cubs, Bulls, Bears, Blackhawks, and even the White Sox. We listened to sports talk radio and checked the scores on Sports Phone. Starting around age 12, Michael’s mom would drop us off at the Wilmette El station, and we’d take the train to Wrigley Field. We'd bounce around from seat to seat on the train car and then do the same at Wrigley, trying to get closer and closer to the field while doing our best to elude the ushers.
We lived in a world of kids who were mostly unsupervised outside of school hours, playing games, making our own rules, and embracing the serendipity of suburban childhood.
Irene's husband, Abbey, joins us, and the conversation wends to when and why Michael and I grew apart. I fumble as I try to explain. Abbey tells me he once asked Michael why he didn't play sports in high school. Michael told Abbey he showed up at freshman baseball tryouts on the first day but didn't return. The story triggers a realization, and I share it.
The world expanded as Michael and I moved into our later high school years. My circle of friends and activities grew. Though Michael excelled in our world of neighborhood games and familiar friends, the larger world was more challenging for him. Like that freshman tryout, Michael tried things as he grew older but often retreated.
In my sophomore year of college, my father and stepmother divorced. My dad moved from our family home on Fairview Road, and I followed him to a different town. I didn't go back to the neighborhood much. Michael and I went on separate paths.
I remember the last time I saw Michael, and the memory brings pangs of guilt. I hesitate to tell Abbey and Irene, but during a lull in our conversation, I do.
I was home from college and went to visit Michael. I rang his doorbell, and his mother answered. Before she called for Michael, she looked up at me and scolded me for not coming around more often and not being a loyal friend to Michael. "You don't treat a friend that way." I stood there, struck dumb, with no answer for her. After a few seconds of my silence, she turned and called for Michael. He stepped past his mother, and we headed to the driveway to play basketball.
As we played, I realized Michael was different. It was hard for my college-aged self to know what it was, but I knew I felt uncomfortable around my childhood friend. Some things he said didn't make sense to me, and the stories he told about our shared experiences did not mesh with my memories of those incidents. We played one-on-one one last time, and when we finished, I drove off and did not return.
Irene, Abbey, and I are quiet for a few beats before they transition to the present and tell me about Michael's dire condition. As they explain, it becomes clear this day is leading me inexorably toward a visit with Michael in his hospital room.
_________
The elevator door opens. I pause and attempt a deep inhale before stepping into the hall. I silently recite Michael's room number as I read the numbers outside the rooms I pass. Some rooms are occupied by audible and visible suffering, while in other rooms, patients stare ahead in silent defeat and resignation. I approach Michael's room number. I stop and contemplate turning around before I inch forward and peer in. I can only see Irene's back as she leans over Michael. I knock. Irene turns around. Her body blocks Michael's face. She wears a gown and a mask and points me down the hall to where I am to get my own set. I numbly follow her directions and find the gown and mask station. I pull them on with shaking hands and shallow breaths.
I step into the room, Irene moves aside, and I look down at Michael. Poor guy. It's just not right for him to end up this way. I hold out my hand, he takes it, and we shake. His handshake is surprisingly firm. "It's good to see you, Michael."
"Good to see you, too," he responds in a barely audible rasp.
"I'm sorry you're going through this."
He nods.
I sit beside the bed as Irene moves to the other side. I steal gazes at Michael's face as he talks to Irene, and I am troubled that I don't recognize his features. He asks me to take my mask off, and when I do, he whispers, "Handsome," something neither of us would have uttered to the other in our previous lives together.
Uncomfortable, I respond with a self-deprecating, "Why, thank you."
Irene asks us questions about what we did together as kids. Michael answers in labored one-word phrases, "Basketball," and I expound. As I talk, the features of the familiar face I knew come into focus. There he is, and here we are. So many years have passed, and we've lived those years in separate universes, but the childhood connection binds us once again. With Irene’s prompting, and relatively few words, memories bring us back to the friendship we shared.
There's a pause. Michael turns to me and mutters something I don't understand. Irene interprets for me - he wants a sip of chocolate milk. I look to my left at the tray on the table next to his bed and see the glass. "Do you want me to hold it for you?"
He nods almost imperceptibly and utters, "Yes."
I hold up the glass and aim the straw toward his mouth. He finds the straw and drinks hungrily. While I am grateful I can offer him this slight relief, the interaction bothers me. Michael and I would not admit weakness and rarely asked the other for help. We were competitors. Now, here we are, all these years later, and he needs my help doing something as simple as drinking a glass of chocolate milk. It's something we couldn't have, and shouldn't have, imagined all those years ago.
As we continue to talk, Michael becomes increasingly agitated. He is in obvious pain, he is hungry, and the food Irene ordered for him is taking a long time to arrive. My inner voice tells me it's time to go. Though our visit has been brief, it has been profound - reminiscences, reconnection, renewal - but the magic of our childhood memories is fading in the face of the realities permeating the hospital room. My hope is to preserve the magic for however long each of us may live.
So I stand up, grab my coat, and stand at the foot of his bed. We shake hands, and as we do, the distance, the years, and his sickness dissolve. We are simply two good friends. I close my eyes to hold back tears, and my head begins to swirl.
When I open my eyes, I'm dribbling a basketball. I look around. I'm in Michael's childhood driveway. A teenaged Michael crouches in a defensive stance, looking up at me with electric sparks in his black eyes as he bounces on the balls of his feet. Somehow, we're out of the hospital, no longer old men, and playing basketball like we have so many times before.
I pick up my dribble, and we stare at one another momentarily. I scan Michael's face, looking for recognition of what is happening, but as I do, he lunges, swipes the ball out of my hands, chases it down, gathers it, and turns to face me. After a slight pause, Michael bursts towards the basket. I stand in place, still dazed, as he flies past me. He lays the ball off the backboard, dropping it through the net.
I have the mind and memories of a 62-year-old man, but I am in the body of a teenage me. Bewildered, I attempt to adjust. I look at young Michael and wonder if he is simply an innocent player in my time travel dreamscape, with no understanding of his fate, or if he, like me, has been transported from that life-draining hospital room to whatever this may be.
As I hand Michael the ball, I take a moment to look down at my body, amazed by what I see, what I had once taken for granted, and as I admire myself, he blows by me for an uncontested layup.
We meet at the top of the key to start the next play. As Michael hands me the ball, I look into his eyes again. They are intense, and they demand, "Play!"
So I play. And we go at it, competing hard like we always did. The score goes back and forth until it's tied at 8 points each. It's understood the game goes to 10, win by two.
Michael faces the basket, jukes forward, puts me on my heels, quickly steps back, launches his familiar two-handed shot, and swish, nothing but net. 9-8.
I'm taller, so I back him down, bouncing my butt into his midsection, slowly gaining ground until I'm five feet from the basket. I jab left, spin right, jump quickly, and flick a turnaround jumper. The ball bounces off the back of the rim, and Michael snatches the miss. He takes it back and gives me a head fake. I take the bait and jump. He ducks under me and drives for the uncontested winning layup.
The ball drops through the hoop and bounces on the driveway, each bounce weakening until the ball rests against the garage door. We look at one another. I don't know if this will continue or if we'll suddenly find ourselves back in that awful hospital room. Michael picks up the ball, fires a two-handed chest pass at me, and says, "2 out of 3." The ball smacks against my palms as I catch it. "Loser's ball," he says with a smirk.
I win the second game 10-7. We waste no time starting the third.
I also win the third game, 2 out of 3, and immediately blurt out, "3 out of 5!" The winner of a rubber game never says this, but I do, wanting to stay here playing basketball with Michael.
Michael wins Game 4. It's 2 games to 2.
Game 5 is close. We are sweating, breathing hard, pushing against one another, feeling our youth, trading baskets until Michael is up 9-8 with the ball, one basket away from victory. He dribbles at the top of the key, fakes left, goes right, stops suddenly, lifts up, and lets go of a soft one-hander that drops through the net. He wins 3 games out of 5, quickly fires the ball at me, and says, "4 out of 7."
I win Game 6.
As the seventh game progresses, my mind slowly shifts from my temporary respite of being a 15-year-old kid to the gray-haired 62-year-old man I see in the mirror daily. Mentally, I'm transitioning back to my real world, but my body remarkably remains young. I pick up my dribble and look at Michael, who refuses to meet my gaze, stabbing at the ball in my hands, continuing to focus with intensity and a desperation to stave off loss.
So I make a move to the basket. Michael taps the ball away with a flick of his wrist. He takes it back, flies past me, and lays it in. I miss an outside shot. He hits one. He is pulling away, victory within his reach. Somehow, I know this is all coming to an end. I am distracted as we continue, filled with a foreboding sadness brought on by our imminent return to the tragic present.
Michael scores and pushes the ball into my stomach, fixing me with that intent and demanding look. So I bring myself back to this moment, and we play. Hard. I mount a comeback and narrow his lead. When I bank in a shot from the right side, the score narrows to 9-8 in Michael's favor.
Michael dribbles to his left, and I recognize what he is about to do. Throughout our childhood, Michael had a move he used on me that would start in this position - left side, top of the key. Michael would dribble to the middle of the lane, lean into me to generate space, and release a high floater towards the basket. He could consistently arc it over my outstretched fingertips when we were younger. As we moved into our teen years, I grew taller than Michael and eventually was able to reach the shot and block it. So he would adapt and loft it higher, and I would adjust and jump sooner. And so on.
So here he is, setting it up, dribbling the ball, eyeing his intended path. He quickly takes off to his right. I move my feet. He gets his body into mine, pushing me back, and begins the familiar half-hook shot. I raise up as he lets go of the ball. Michael puts extra loft on this one, and I continue to rise. The ball nears its apex as I near the peak of my jump. As my left fingertips stretch toward the ball, I close my eyes tightly, hoping it will give me the extra effort I need to reach it, but all I feel is air.
I open my eyes, and I'm standing over Michael's bed, still holding his hand. Our eyes meet and a wordless understanding courses through me. His eyes tell me he feels it, too. This moment is ours. Two men sharing a powerful connection, transcending time and space, as the billions of people on Earth, happy and sad, lucky and not-so-lucky, living and dying, carry on.
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