Christina Littlefield
Lessons
You gotta love church activities where you get to beat people up.
For the last couple of summers, my cousin Travis and I have played broomball with my church college group. For those unversed in the many intricacies of broomball, it’s an insane combination of field hockey and soccer played on the ice — without skates. You run around and try to hit a softball size plastic ball into hockey goals with these broom-like sticks. The sport ranges from casual late night college coed games to semi-professional six-on-six league matches.
Travis had no fear on the ice. A natural athlete with his mother’s good looks and his father’s sense of adventure, he would slide around the ice in just shorts and a T-shirt. I introduced him to the sport but he taught me how to play it, using the finesse qualities of doing body checks against the wall and the higher principles of how to sacrifice your body for the team.
God, I miss him.
Travis died Feb. 2. He fell down a flight of stairs at a college party in Salt Lake City, and hit his head so hard he suffered a stroke. The swelling caused severe brain damage and doctors pronounced him dead three days after the fall.
He was 20 years old, the baby of three siblings and of us cousins who grew up roughhousing with each other. Half the scars on my body are from his older brother Stephen — sometimes Trav helped Steve, sometimes he helped me.
Travis had blond hair, blue eyes, and a grin that you knew meant trouble. He was up for anything adventurous like snow boarding or skate boarding. Impatient and energetic, Travis sucked all the marrow out of life.
It seems so unreal that he is gone. It’s like a really bad nightmare that can’t possibly be true. At his memorial service in Las Vegas, I kept expecting him to suddenly come up and jump on my back or do something equally Trav-like. It won’t feel real till the next family function, where there is an empty spot at the kiddie table.
I watch people trip all the time on this campus, but the only thing ever hurt is their pride. Falling down the stairs seems straight out of a cheesy melodrama, such as when Scarlett O’Hara falls in “Gone With the Wind.” I’ve seen Trav skateboard down steep concrete stairs — no one would ever have thought he would die walking down one flight.
If Sept. 11 taught us anything, it’s that the entire world can change in an instant. It’s a lesson I fear I learn again and again.
But there’s another thing I’ve learned since Sept. 11 and from my cousin Travis. It’s to live life to the fullest because you never know if today may be your last. Travis should have had several decades of life ahead of him. But in the 20 years he had, Trav always just went for it — whatever challenge was before him. I hope to do the same.
Tomorrow night Campus Ministry is hosting a broomball game open to the entire campus community. I for one, will be there, and I invite you to be there too. Meet at Special Programs at 9 p.m.
Warning: I play kind of rough. But hey, I learned from the best.
February 14, 2002