It had been one week after my buddy Haden took his own life. I was standing by the dugout while my son played in the dirt with his t-ball teammates. His friends he called them whether they wore the neon yellow or a different jersey. The Bananas. Another dad approached me through the chain link fence, “Hey I just wanted to let you know you’re killing it as a dad out here.” I thought he might be messing with me at first. I can hear a papaw screaming and cheering as as his little man runs the bases, I talk to old classmates and hear about their families and the work they do putting HVAC units in buildings, I watch other parents chase their babies through the dust and I feel ok.

There’s a creek by the ballpark, a lot of Banana games get cancelled because the field gets flooded. Every game Hiram insists we take some time to go down to the creek side and throw gravel into the muddy stream. He calls it, “a nasty old creek.” The water is low today, but you can see below the surface. Some old logs and a tire are submerged and staring back at us where we usually toss our stones. The leaves of the trees hang low with dried clumps of mud clinging to them, Hiram sends a rock bristling through their huddled shapes.

And then I think about my buddy again, one week and we are eating hot dogs and playing ball and throwing rocks in the creek. Because that’s what people do, we talk about it, we mourn, and then the rain comes back and the life and the love of the people still here takes shape around the hurt. And that don’t mean the field ain’t gonna flood again, it just means we know what to do when it does.