Memorial Day, hockey, family, and the ordinary joy we almost miss
I spent part of Memorial Day weekend standing in a hockey net, sore as hell, trying to convince my body it still had one more save left in it.
That sounds about right for me.
Some people relax on long weekends. Some people barbecue. Some people go to the lake. I decided to play goalie in a tournament on two teams because apparently my decision-making process still has a blind spot where my knees are concerned.
The tournament was for the Inland Northwest Girls Hockey Foundation, which made the whole thing matter more. It was hockey, but it was also community. It was a fundraiser. It was adults acting like teenagers in the best way. It was people showing up for girls in the sport. It was laughter, gear, sweat, bad smells, sore legs, and that strange little magic that happens when a rink becomes a temporary home for a weekend.
And I played well.
I’m saying that carefully because nobody needs a full old-goalie documentary. But I had a great weekend. I had amazing teams in front of me. They battled. They backchecked. They made me look better than I probably deserved. For a couple days, the old man in net still had another gear.
Damn, that was fun.
Then Memorial Day landed on top of it, and the whole weekend started to feel heavier in a good way.
Because that’s the thing about ordinary joy. Sometimes you don’t realize how much it means until something makes you stop and actually look at it.
The rink has a way of showing you time
The part that got me wasn’t only the hockey.
It was watching everybody grow up.
My own kids are adults now. Jacob is grown. Cameron is out in the world building his life. Samantha is her own person, carrying strength, pain, humor, and everything that comes with stepping into adulthood. I know this. I live this. But knowing it and feeling it are different things.
As a parent, so much of life is logistics. Practices, dinners, rides, appointments, homework, bills, worries, gear, late nights, early mornings, and the constant quiet question of whether you are doing enough. You spend years moving everyone from place to place, trying to hold the whole thing together, and then one day you look up and the little kids are gone.
Adults are standing there instead.
That same feeling showed up at the rink this weekend.
Girls we have watched around hockey for years were out there playing with us. They’re eighteen now. They’re heading off to school. They’re laughing on the bench, competing hard, chirping like they have been in beer league for twenty years, and skating with the confidence of young women stepping into whatever comes next.
If you’ve been around youth sports long enough, you know how fast it goes. One year they’re tiny inside oversized gear, trying to figure out where to stand. Then you blink, and they’re making plays, packing for college, and carrying themselves like the future already started.
There is pride in that. There is joy in it. There is also a little ache.
You want them to grow. You want them to leave in the healthy way. You want them to find their people, build their lives, and take everything the community gave them into the next chapter. Still, there’s something tender about realizing a chapter mattered and nobody gets to stay in it forever.
That’s what the rink did to me.
It put my own kids growing up and those girls growing up in the same emotional frame. It reminded me that time doesn’t ask for permission. It keeps moving whether we are paying attention or not.
This weekend, I was paying attention.
Playing with Jacob
Playing with Jacob was one of the best parts of the weekend.
He’s good. Like, actually good.
There’s a specific kind of joy in watching your kid do something well. But this was different from standing at the glass as a dad. I wasn’t watching him as a little boy anymore. I was playing with him. Sharing the ice with him. Seeing him move, compete, laugh, and make plays in a game we both love.
That does something to you.
At some point, your kid becomes someone you don’t only protect or teach. You get to admire them. You get to stand beside them. You get to look across the ice and think, “Man, I love who you are becoming.”
That is a gift I don’t want to rush past.
Some gifts show up dressed like normal weekends. They don’t announce themselves. They don’t glow. They don’t stop the clock and tell you to pay attention. They happen between games, in a locker room, during a laugh, after a save, on a drive home with sore legs and a full heart.
Those are the gifts I’m trying to notice more.
Missing my mom inside a good weekend
I missed my mom this weekend too.
That kind of missing sneaks into good days. It doesn’t always arrive as sadness first. Sometimes it shows up because you want to call someone.
I wanted to tell her about Jacob. I wanted to say, “Mom, you should have seen him out there.” I wanted to tell her the old man still had a little magic in net. I wanted her to laugh with me, be proud with me, and make the whole thing feel more complete.
Grief is strange that way.
It doesn’t only live in dark rooms. It lives inside joy too, because joy wants to be shared. A good day makes you miss the person who would have known exactly why it mattered.
That is one of the cruel and beautiful things about love. When someone is gone, you don’t only miss them when life hurts. You miss them when life is good. You miss them when something funny happens. You miss them when your kid does something amazing. You miss them when your hand almost reaches for the phone before your heart remembers.
The good days carry the missing too.
That doesn’t ruin them. It makes them deeper.
Memorial Day and the people who came home
Memorial Day also made me think about my dad and my grandpas.
My dad served, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for what service means in a family. I’m grateful for the sacrifice, discipline, and weight that comes with it.
My grandpas served in wars, and we were lucky.
They came home.
That sentence feels heavier the older I get.
They came home.
They got to keep living. They got to sit at tables. They got to build families. They got to become part of stories that kept going.
So many families did not get that.
Memorial Day is for the people who didn’t come home. It is for the families who carried the empty chair. It is for the kids who grew up with stories instead of a person. It is for spouses, parents, siblings, and friends who live every day with a loss the country formally remembers once a year.
That matters.
And I don’t think honoring that means we have to be miserable all weekend. I don’t believe the people we honor would want us afraid to laugh, play, gather, or enjoy the life still in front of us.
But remembrance asks something of our joy.
It asks us not to treat it like it was cheap.
The life protected by service is not only a grand national idea. It is the actual ordinary life. It is coffee in the morning. It is your kid walking through the door. It is a hockey tournament. It is driving home tired and grateful. It is laughing with teammates. It is watching kids grow up. It is calling someone you love. It is missing someone you wish you could call.
People gave up a future full of ordinary things.
That should make us live ours with more care.
Don’t waste the life still in your hands
This week’s episode of Still Here, Still Trying is called What Are We Doing With the Life We Still Have?
That question came from the rink, but it didn’t stay there.
It came from playing with Jacob. It came from watching the girls grow up. It came from missing my mom. It came from thinking about my dad’s service and my grandpas coming home. It came from Memorial Day and the families who didn’t get the homecoming my family got.
It came from realizing how easy it is to miss your own life while you are standing right in the middle of it.
We do that all the time.
We rush. We worry. We scroll. We stay half-present. We move from one obligation to the next. We tell ourselves we will slow down later, say the thing later, take the picture later, play the game later, make the call later, live later.
Then later becomes memory.
I don’t want to keep doing that.
I don’t want to sleepwalk through the gifts and recognize them only after they’re gone. I don’t want to be so busy building, fixing, leading, worrying, and surviving that I forget to enjoy the moments that make the work worth doing.
Maybe the better Memorial Day question is not whether we felt sad enough.
Maybe the better question is whether we are living with enough intention now.
Are we loving people out loud while they are still here to hear it? Are we using our voice for something better than noise? Are we showing up for our community instead of only complaining about it? Are we paying attention while our kids become adults right in front of us? Are we letting joy soften us instead of letting stress harden everything?
That is the work I’m carrying this week.
The story behind “Don’t Lose Your Smile”
This episode closes with a separate PS segment about my new song, “Don’t Lose Your Smile.”
That song means a lot to me because it was the first fully original song I built from scratch.
I had been learning guitar and kept returning to a simple C, G, D, G progression. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. It had this natural movement I couldn’t stop playing.
The song started downstairs at the Alaska terminal in the Boise airport. I had my little Martin travel guitar with me, and I was waiting for a flight home. I was playing that progression over and over while talking on the phone with Jacob, who was traveling in Portugal.
He told me about a meaningful day he had, and somewhere in that conversation, he said someone told him, “Don’t lose your smile.”
That line landed right on the melody I was already playing.
That was the song.
A dad in an airport. A son across the world. A little guitar. One simple line that carried more than either of us probably knew in the moment.
Over the next few months, I shaped the lyrics, melody, and feel. I played guitar and sang the original version myself. Then I used AI-assisted music and editing tools to help bring the final track to life with texture, harmonica, and the sound I was hearing in my head.
That is what I mean when I talk about AI Tools. Human Voice.
The tools helped amplify something human. They didn’t replace the moment. They didn’t invent the feeling. They helped me carry it further.
The song is for Jake, but it is also for anyone trying to hold onto hope and softness while life gets heavy. It is for the part of us grief doesn’t get to take. It is for the part of us that still laughs in a locker room, cheers for kids, plays one more game, misses our mom, thanks the people who served, remembers the people who didn’t come home, and lets joy have a place in our chest.
Listen to Episode 51
This episode is about Memorial Day, but it’s not a speech.
It’s about hockey, but it’s not a sports recap.
It’s about family, grief, service, and the ordinary joy we almost miss because we are moving too fast.
I hope you listen. I hope you share it with someone who needs the reminder. I hope it makes you call somebody, take the picture, say the thing, play the game, show up for the fundraiser, thank the person who served, remember the family carrying the loss, and stop rushing past your own life.
We honor the people who didn’t get to finish their lives by refusing to sleepwalk through ours.
That is what this week’s episode is really about.
Listen to Episode 51 of Still Here, Still Trying: “What Are We Doing With the Life We Still Have?”
And when you’re done, tell me this:
What ordinary moment are you trying not to rush past right now?