Perspective at times comes to find you

Published 12:00 am Saturday, January 21, 2012

By Ryan Arena

Sports make us laugh and cry. The most passionate of we sports fans form a symbiotic bond with our teams, reveling in their victories and aching in their defeats. Our moods can rise and fall with the awkward bounce of a football, the sweet swish of a ball through a net, that deafening crack of a bat when a favorite player, a child or a brother or sister sends a baseball out of a park and into the next zip code.

We follow sports for an escape from reality. We don’t often look there to find perspective, just to immerse ourselves in our fantasy.

But sometimes, once in awhile, we find perspective all the same, even in that fantasyland. Sometimes, it’s unexpected, even shocking. Sometimes we’re jolted back into reality.

And sometimes, that reality is a cruel place to be. Tuesday night reminded me of such.

My friends and I have played in an on-and-off weekly recreational basketball league since last summer. Tuesday represented the second game of its third season. If you’ve come across me at River Parishes sporting events over the past few seasons and are thinking, “Hmmmm … he doesn’t seem that athletic at all,” … you’d be right. That, and a lack of organized playing experience for many of us, led to a cascade of results like Tuesday’s, where we “got run” for lack of a better term.

It was Dustin’s first night playing with us. He was a longtime friend of mine, and others on our team, who I’d asked to come aboard, as we needed people to round out our roster. He said he wasn’t very good; I said he’d fit right in. And, as Dustin was apt to do, he got excited about the prospect. He told us proudly that his goal was to be our Dennis Rodman, our Charles Oakley, and not even score a basket. Rebounds. Picks. Defense. ELBOWS. Essentially, he wanted to be the perfect teammate. Fine by us, of course.

But as we were getting blown out, Dustin found himself an open shot from the wing and drilled in a bank-shot 3.

As we talked about what we needed to do to come away with a win next time, we joked with him about that. Dustin smiled — he didn’t take himself all that seriously, one of his most endearing qualities — and said he’d already spoiled his goal.

Those were the last words any of us would exchange with Dustin.

As we talked strategy, suddenly he fell into the wall and onto the ground between us all as we realized something was very wrong, and immediately called — cried in some cases —for help.

I wish I could say that it was all a blur, that my memories of that night bled together, that it leaves a numbness to me.

But I remember it all. The facial expressions of each of my friends. Those of the people preparing to play in the next game, as an entire gym looked on in silence and sadness. The feeling I had in my gut as I watched first our teammates — an EMT and a med student were on our roster, so he was in immediate care — then an opposing player, then the medical care from East Jefferson trying to save his life. I remember the desperate hope that what appeared to be happening was something, anything less than the worst. I remember his wife, Ardyn, staying strong in the face of an unspeakable fear, refusing to give up. Her tearful mother asking for some time alone with her daughters.

I remember the awful wait for some news, any news. Then I remember wishing that it hadn’t, when the news finally came. I remember the tears — my own, and of those I had known forever, flowing together for the first time. I remember not understanding why.

I remember losing our friend. I remember losing my friend.

I attended Dustin’s 30th birthday party on the Friday that had just passed. One of the last things he said to me as the party wound down was that he was glad to see me.

We hadn’t seen one another in awhile, he said, an oddity especially during football season — if I was not in the Superdome, chances are I was by Dustin’s house for a road Saints game, some Redzone channel and an absurd amount of fantasy football talk. We agreed to make plans with some of the others and talked, of course, about the upcoming basketball game.

I’d see him the next day for Saints/49ers. Then three days later for basketball.

If such an awful thing had to happen, I find solace in at least two things: that I got to spend so much time with him over his final days, and that he got to enjoy that party, where a house AND a backyard full of people came out to show their love of him. Dustin was originally supposed to play with us a week before, but had been under the weather. I have no idea if history would have played out the exact same way. But I do know he felt loved and appreciated after last weekend.

Originally, I sat down to write this intending to display, as well as I could, why we all loved him as we did. And I think that is still to come. But I think a larger lesson is to be learned, if nothing else comes from this.

When the final buzzer of our game went off Tuesday, I had two immediate concerns in the world: First, that I shot badly. Secondly, that someone hit a 3-point shot in my face and talked just a little bit of trash about it.

That “trash-talker” would be attempting to help save my friend’s life moments later.

Sometimes in life, perspective is forced upon you when you least expect.

Sometimes, you learn what really matters in the harshest of ways.