Wolfe missing family as he soldiers on through difficult season
Separated from his family and turned away from football, Derek Wolfe woke up alone on Thanks giving Day.
The Ravens’ defensive end has become numb in some ways to the more gutting parts of this pandemic-strickenseason. His wife, teenage stepdaughter and 1-year-old daughter were back home in Colorado, a decision he had endorsed and now had to endure.
The Ravens, mired in a coronavirus outbreak, were still days away from reuniting at the team facility. Their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers already had been pushed back once; another two postponements would soon be announced.
Only the generosity of Wolfe’s landlord, a“really sweet lady” who’ d prepared Wolfe some Thanksgiving dinner, softened the edges of another hard day of solitude.
“It’s been tough,” Wolfe said in an interview Saturday morning, before the Ravens’ last day of practice for Monday night’s game against the Cleveland Browns. “It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just the way it is. I’m making a sacrifice for my family right now, and obviously I’m still living my dream, so there’s sacrifices that come with that. And it could be worse.”
For all that Wolfe has — his health, his family, his new starring role on one of the NFL’s best defenses — he is thankful. Hopeful, too, that at least Christmas will be a little more normal this month, his loved ones by his side in Maryland.
But Wolfe, maybe more than any player on a Ravens team striving for the playoffs, understands what’s lost when a family goes away. It pains him not to see his girls because he knows the intimate pain of a fractured childhood.
Every day, his family changes in ways big and small. All he can do is tell them he loves them, that he misses them, and cross off the days on his calendar until he sees them again.
“It’s difficult, man,” Wolfe said. “I really do miss my daughter and my wife and my
oldest like crazy. That love — I never had that kind of family love. So once you have it and then it’s not there, it’s difficult.”
The plan was to make it work, long distance. Wolfe knew it wouldn’t be easy.
He’s on a one-year deal in Baltimore. His wife, Abigail, is managing rental properties back home and helping to oversee construction of a mountainside cabin for the family. Wolfe’s stepdaughter, Tatum, is13— “You can’t just switch schools,” he said — and Roxanna was born less than 18 months ago.
Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, Wolfe didn’t know his biological father. He’s said his stepfather physically and verbally abused him. Even after his stepfather divorced Wolfe’s mother, who struggled with alcohol abuse, and moved out, Wolfe went with him. It wasn’t until a friend’s
family offered Wolfe a permanent place to live that his life stabilized.
When Wolfe became a stepfather after marrying Abigail in 2017 and then a first-time father last year, he had a family all his own, unspoiled by the life he’d left behind. He could give what he had not always been given. After eight strong seasons with the Denver Broncos, Wolfe had financial security and an opportunity to chase a Super Bowl in Baltimore.
And for the first half of the season, as Wolfe worked himself into what coach John Harbaugh called “dominant” form, his erstwhile family tried to make 2020 as normal as possible. Every few weeks, they’d fly into Baltimore and spend time with him. But with COVID-19 cases spiking and flu season approaching, Derek and Abigail decided cross-country flights would be too risky.
Abigail Face Times with Wolfe every day. She sends him videos of their baby getting bigger, smarter, stronger. She tells him he’s not missing as much as he thinks, but Wolfe cannot totally convince himself of that. He wonders about all the words Roxanna’s saying, thinks about all the hugs he’s not giving.
“I just want to be able to hold my daughter,” he said. “That unconditional love — she’s really the only blood that I have inmy life.”
This holiday season, it is a familiar anguish. There are U.S. troops who go a year or two without seeing their children, Wolfe said. Around the facility, teammates have missed out on holiday parties, birthdays and get-togethers.
Those are the realities of life, Harbaugh said Saturday, and “it’s no different for NFL football players.”
“It’s just a tough time in the world right now for relationships,” he said. “I’m really proud of theway our guys have handled it.
“I don’t think they let it affect the business part of it too much, but it’s very important to be sensitive to that … and to understand that everybody is kind of going through a lot right now.”
For now, all Wolfe can do is wait. The Ravens ’“Monday Night Football” match up with Cleveland (9-3) is something of a homecoming for him, even if the family he cares most about is halfway across the country. When he wakes up Tuesday morning, the Ravens (7-5) could be one step closer to a third straight postseason berth, and his family could be one day closer to joining him for the holidays.
Just wait until Christmas, he’s told them. “It’s only a couple more days,” he said, “and they’ll be here.”