A MOTHER’S LOVE
Bengals’ Super Bowl run reawakens memory of mom’s final hours
The tears started welling up, the memories started flooding back after the Cincinnati Bengals’ victory in the divisional round.
Even though the urge to relive one of the most painful days of my past made little sense.
By the final six minutes of last Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, my chest was tight and my arms were shaking, even though I was wearing my coziest hoodie.
Obviously, something in my subconscious wanted the Bengals to return to the Super Bowl for the first time since Jan. 22, 1989.
Even though I spent much of that day crammed into a corner of my mother’s hospital room, watching the game on one of those tiny televisions on an extension arm that swung over her bed.
Faye Ridenour didn’t much care for the NFL, although she surely glanced at the sports section of the Louisville Courier-journal after I began covering the Cleveland Browns in 1981. She may have seen little of the Bengals’ 20-16 loss to the San Francisco 49ers. We barely spoke, although I do remember explaining my reaction to Bengals nose tackle Tim Krumrie being carted off with a gruesome broken leg.
No one visited that afternoon. Her life was in its final hours. It was comforting just being together.
Professional golf and college basketball were what we’d most enjoyed before my father, Les, passed away on Sept. 11, 1977. Even after he died, mom and I would settle down together for the final round of the Masters when I managed to get home for my birthday.
The only time I remember her going to a game that didn’t involve University of Louisville basketball was a trip to Cincinnati to see the Reds against the Philadelphia Phillies when Riverfront Stadium opened in 1970. I still have the scorecard. Dad bought upper deck seats but the height made her dizzy, so he exchanged them for the yellow level.
She sometimes took advantage of the opportunity to attend the Kentucky Derby when I covered it, getting dressed up, packing her lunch, and usually sitting alone in the top row of the grandstand. Once she went with my friend.
When the Bengals reached their second Super Bowl after the 1988 season, my mother’s 21⁄2-year battle with colon cancer was nearly over. I was scheduled to work that game in Joe Robbie Stadium. My trip was canceled when she was rushed to the hospital for the final time, pumped with transfusions in hopes of keeping her alive until I could get there from Dayton.
Mom knew I was supposed to be there, that I was wrapped up in the NFL. She knew how invested I was in my career. In my mind, she willed herself to live until Tuesday because she wanted me to see the Super Bowl.
So while close friends in Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati were celebrating the Bengals’ 27-24 overtime victory over the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, I was flooded with emotions of a different sort, transported back to the chair in the corner at Baptist East Hospital.
Maybe it was because Super Bowl
XXIII was the last game we watched together. Maybe because the Bengals’ Super Bowl run brought this anniversary of her passing to the forefront. Maybe because I’ve given my dad so much credit for launching my sports writing career that I’d failed to realize mom’s perfectionist traits were just as important, especially when it came to excelling in school.
There was also a little bit of a full-circle moment in all of it.
I covered the Bengals’ first Super Bowl after the 1981 season, and those memories remain vivid. My fear during the flight on a small prop jet as it was buffeted about in bad weather, no one to talk to because it was filled with businessmen. An ice storm the night before the game. The Bengals didn’t allow women in the locker room, so I found myself kneeling at the feet of victorious 49ers quarterback Joe Montana.
I just realized that the Bengals’ 26-21 loss to the 49ers in the Pontiac Silverdome came on Jan. 24, the day mom died.
I’m not alone in having such an emotional tie to a family member who has passed away and a sporting event. The elevator used for the media at the 2016 World Series at Wrigley Field was filled with the ill and elderly in wheelchairs hoping for one more sweet Chicago Cubs win. So many touching stories come from the last time together at a ballpark, arena, golf course or football stadium.
Chances are this wave of nostalgia will not have passed by the time the Bengals take on the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI at Sofi Stadium.
Considering my watery eyes a week ago and the tears shed in front of a laptop on Sunday, Faye Ridenour wants a Bengals victory.
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mridenourabj.