Centered

by Jason Brown

  But she didn’t say that. She just sat there, in the front seat, not uttering a word. That’s not like Mom at all. She has something to say about everything.

  So, after I went on for about ten minutes, mapping out all my sorrows and frustrations, I began to worry. Did she fall asleep? I wondered.

  “Mama? Can you hear me? Are you listening to me?”

  She hadn’t fallen asleep. She wasn’t thinking of just the right words to say to make me feel better.

  “You need to shut up,” she said, not even turning around. “You need to shut up.”

  I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say.

  She wheeled around to look at me flush in the face, her eyes hard and hurt.

  “Nothing you’re going through in your life right now—nothing—can compare to what your brother’s going through, fighting and serving our country in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said.

  That was all she said. She turned back around and that was it. That was all she needed to say. If my ego had been a balloon—one that had gotten bigger with each passing year since I was sixteen—Mom had effectively untied the string and let all the air raspberry out. After it was completely deflated, I realized just how full of pride and selfishness I’d been. I had been thinking of only myself, when my brother—someone I loved, someone I’d respected for so much of my life—was going through trials and hardships and dangers that I could never, ever imagine.

  I didn’t say sorry. I didn’t say anything. Nothing else needed to be said.

  That before-dinner speech of my mother’s, as short as it was, flipped my attitude completely around. Football suddenly got a lot easier—not physically but mentally.

  Listen, playing football at a high level is never easy. I worked hard that season, as hard as ever. I lost plenty of sweat in practices and games. But my mom helped put all that work and all that I was going through into perspective. I stopped wallowing in self-pity. I started to reflect more on the elements of my life that were truly important to me—the things that meant something. If I had a bad practice, I thought about my brother in his desert camouflage, patrolling the streets of Abu Ghraib. If I lost a game, I thought about Ducie’s daughter and how much he must long to see her.

  The Knock

  My father heard the news first. It was September 21, a Sunday. My mom was already at church for Sunday school. My dad was still at home getting ready to meet her for the service when he heard the knock.

  He opened the door and saw the men in their green dress uniforms and spit-polished shoes. He knew. Before they opened their mouths, the tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Y’all get off my porch!” he shouted. “Get off my property! Whatever you came here to tell me, I don’t want to hear it!” He shut the door in their faces. He started weeping. He couldn’t stop.

  But they didn’t leave.

  * * *

  ···

  My mom was at church, in Sunday school, when the church phone rang. “Deborah, it’s your husband, Bernard.”

  “Hey, honey, is everything all right?”

  Moments later, her fellow churchgoers watched as she fell to her knees.

  * * *

  ···

  We’d lost again. The day before, we’d played a road game up in Wisconsin, 38–27—our third straight defeat. But when you play Division I football, you get very little time off. That Sunday morning, I was getting ready to go back to the facility. The medical staff needed to check us out. We players needed to watch game film to see what went right, what went wrong, and how we could improve next week.

  My mom called around ten-thirty, maybe eleven. It wasn’t unusual for her to call, as we often talked after a game. She sounded normal enough.

  “Hey, son, how’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Doing good, Mom.”

  “Are you getting ready to go back into the football facility?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.

  She might’ve paused just a little bit before she spoke again.

  “Hey, baby, I need you to do something for me. Do you have Coach Bunting’s number?”

  Coach John Bunting was the head coach for the Tar Heels football team my entire career at UNC. He’d recruited me. But when my mom said this, part of me wanted to roll my eyes a little. I thought at first she was kidding. See, Mom would sometimes joke around with me after a game. You know, someone needs to talk with your coach about how you played, she’d say. Give him some good advice. Every time, I’d tell her no. Don’t ever say anything to my coach, I’d tell her. Please don’t be that mom, trying to tell him how to do his job.

  “Mom,” I said with a touch of mock exasperation in my voice. “Why do you need my coach’s number?”

  Mom was still very calm, very composed, but she wasn’t relenting. “Just get it for me, would you? Can you get that for me quickly? I need it as soon as possible.”

  “Um, sure,” I said. “I’ll work on it right now.”

  I’d just hung up when I got another call, this one from my aunt June.

  “Hey, Jason,” she said, sounding a little strange. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing good, Auntie,” I said, really puzzled by now.

  “Good, good,” she said. “Listen, have you talked with your mother?”

  “I just got off the phone with her,” I said. “She was just asking for my coach’s phone number. What’s going on, Auntie?”

  “Um, no. Yeah, you just need to call back your mother.”

  “What’s going on, Auntie?” I asked, my voice rising a little.

  “Just call your mother back,” Aunt June said.

  After receiving my aunt’s suspicious call, I knew there was a full-fledged family-wide conspiracy going on, so I called my sister in Washington, DC, but she didn’t know any more than I did. By now I knew that something serious was happening, but I hadn’t put together all the pieces yet. So I called my mom back.

  “Did you get me the number for your coach yet?” she asked.

  “No, Mom, no,” I said. “What’s going on? Look, Aunt June knows there’s something going on. Dana knows something’s going on. What’s happening?”

  She paused. “Son, I just need you to do what I asked you to do, all right? I need you to get me the number for Coach Bunting.”

  Suddenly, the truth hit me. It hit me hard. I felt it, like a bullet, in the center of my spirit.

  “It’s Ducie, isn’t it?” I said.

  She took another long pause. “Yes, baby,” she finally said. “It’s your brother.”

  Mom knew how hard the news would hit me. She knew how devastated I’d be. She wanted my coach’s number to make sure I’d be safe—to arrange for travel back home to Henderson. She knew I’d never be able to see the road through my tears.

  * * *

  ···

  Army Specialist Lunsford Bernard Brown II died September 20, 2003, in a mortar attack in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. He was twenty-seven years old. He left behind a loving wife, Sherrie, and a three-month-old daughter named Amber—a daughter who looked just like him, a daughter who’d never seen him in person.

  I hadn’t seen him myself since 2001. Two long years.

  Before you can help somebody else, you first have to help yourself, he’d told me. I can still see his face as he said it. The words roll through my mind as if he is in front of me, speaking to me now.

  How many prayers had we said? Between his mother and father and brother and sister and all his family and friends, how many thousands and thousands of prayers had been said on behalf of him—asking God, begging God, to protect my big brother? Every day. Every night. Every meal.

  So many prayers, and to have that happen—to have them seemingly go unanswered—it just makes you wonder. What’s going on, God? Why?
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br />   I made it home to Henderson safely. Coach Bunting drove Tay and me there himself. Looking back, it was a tremendous sacrifice for him. His team had just suffered a crushing loss. A game against North Carolina State was next, our biggest rival aside from Duke. He had work to do, hours upon hours of work to get ready for the next game. But he found the time to drive me home himself.

  I spent the rest of that Sunday, and most of Monday, with my family. Those who’ve lost someone close to them can probably imagine what that time was like. You cry and wipe the tears away. And then you cry some more, wipe away more tears. And when you think you’ve got no tears left to shed, you cry some more. It feels like it’ll never stop.

  My mom encouraged me to go back to Chapel Hill—to spend time with my “other brothers,” as she called them, some of whom I’d called selfish just a month or two before. I returned to school Monday night and was back at class and practice on Tuesday. I played the game against North Carolina State. The record shows we lost, 47–34, and I’ll take the record’s word on that. I don’t remember the game. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened that afternoon on the field. My body was there, snapping the ball and blocking, just like always. Physically, I did my job, but mentally and spiritually, I was somewhere else. I only remember red that day: the red of my opponent’s jersey. Not a single snap, not a single block, not a word, not a play. Just red.

  Ducie’s funeral was the next day—a week after my dad told the soldiers to get off his porch, a week after my mom collapsed to her knees. Two charter buses brought the whole football team—all the players, the entire coaching staff—from Chapel Hill.

  Many coaches talk about how a football team is “family.” Most of the time it’s just that: talk. Spend a little time with the coaches, with the players, and you see that their character is far away from that idea of family. But when I saw all my teammates file into church—right after a loss to North Carolina State, right when they should’ve been breaking down game film and preparing for the next opponent—I knew it wasn’t just talk with this team, or with Coach Bunting. I remember looking into the eyes of every single one of my teammates that day. They shed just as many tears as I did.

  And guess what? Every single one of those tears they shed was like one less tear that I had to shed myself.

  The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” That day, my teammates were carrying my burdens. They were carrying my pain. They were there for me, at the lowest point of my life.

  Sometimes people will ask me if I miss football. Every time, the answer is the same: No. But the friendships? The camaraderie? I do miss that. I treasure the memories of those times and the friendships I still have. My mom called them my other brothers, and she was right. They’re my brothers. They’re my family.

  Tagged

  The mortar round came right through Ducie’s tent. It hit the table right where he was standing. Ducie was the closest to the blast; his body absorbed most of the shrapnel, and by being where he was, he saved lives. Ducie died, but the soldiers who stood behind him lived.

  The blast was so strong that it tore through both his dog tags, right where his heart was. Sherrie kept one of those dog tags, the one that was most intact. But she gave me the other one—the one with the clear and obvious hole in it. The hole’s near the bottom, right where his middle initial is stamped. The hole’s jagged. It’s sharp.

  I wore that dog tag around my neck every practice, every game, for the rest of my college career. I turned the jagged side in so I could feel the metal wound. When I put on my tight shoulder pads, when I pulled on my fitted jersey, I could feel the tag press into my skin, into my chest.

  That was my reminder. Jason, you have nothing to complain about, that pain told me. Jason, you have nothing to feel sorry about. There’s no pain you can feel, no pain you can experience, that compares to what your brother sacrificed.

  Not everyone knew I was wearing it. But every hit I took, every block I threw, I’d feel Ducie’s tag dig into me a little more—prick me where it counted.

  That pain, strangely, made me joyful.

  It gets hot in Chapel Hill. Practices can go for two or three hours at a time. You’re working and running and hitting and falling. Sometimes all the work and effort and contact and especially the heat can feel unbearable.

  While my teammates complained, I walked around with a smile on my face. “Come on, guys!” I’d holler. “Come on, let’s push a little harder!”

  See, the pain of practice was nothing, nothing, compared to the pain near my heart. It was the thorn in my flesh.

  In 2 Corinthians 12:7–8, Paul wrote about his own thorn. He asked—“pleaded,” according to some versions—for God to take it away. But God said no. “My grace is sufficient for you,” God told him, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (verse 9). In verse 10, Paul said that he was glad for the reminder: “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

  That dog tag reminds me of my weakness. It reminds me that we’re all weak—that life itself can be fleeting and, to our mortal eyes, far too short.

  But it reminds me, too, of the strength we find in God—that in our own weaknesses, His strength is made manifest. That when we live in Him and follow Him, we can be “content” with whatever comes our way. A three-hour practice in ninety-degree weather isn’t enough to rob us of that contentment. Of that joy.

  I don’t know why Ducie was taken from us. I still miss him. I will never stop missing him. I don’t know why God allowed what happened to happen.

  But I do know that my brother lived a full life, a life worthy of honor and praise. The whys of what happened never go away. But the gratitude—the joy that he was with us for as long as he was, and the understanding that while here, he made lives better—comes back. We may cry because our loved ones are gone, but we can smile because they were here. That they impacted our own lives. That they helped shape us and mold us for the better. We have hope that we’ll see them again someday.

  Sometimes, by way of an icebreaker, people will ask what three people someone would most like to eat dinner with. If someone asked me, I wouldn’t name a football player; I wouldn’t name a celebrity. I’d want to share a meal with Jesus. With Grandpa Jasper. With my brother. Those three lived well. They fought the good fight of faith and finished their race. That’s what I want to do as well: Fight the good fight. Finish the race. Live a life of purpose.

  CHAPTER 4

  Faith, Family, and…Fortune?

  God calls us all for something. He calls us to be fathers and mothers, doctors and teachers, leaders and servants. He calls a few to be football players too.

  For a while, I was one of them.

  He gave me all the gifts I needed to play football. Ever since high school, I’d had the size to play on the offensive line—the physical presence to fill a gap. After years of lifting, I developed the strength not just to fill that hole but also make my presence known there. I could protect my quarterback from charging nose tackles and make gaps through the defense for a running back. I had the ability to play the position mentally, as well—a job that, according to ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, often makes centers the smartest people on the team. The position requires much more than just snapping the football and pushing around another guy like a sumo wrestler. You’ve got to know—or figure out fast—what every one of the twenty-two players on the field are about to do, adjusting line coverage and spotting potential trouble on the fly. And you’ve got to do it all while the quarterback might be calling his own audible and barking out the snap count.

  If I had been a pretty good player before, Ducie’s dog tag gave me the extra push to the next level.

  The tag reminded me that whatever faced me out on the football field was nothing compa
red to what Ducie went through. Whatever sacrifices I made for the team, it was nothing compared to Ducie’s own. I didn’t feel like I was playing with just his dog tag; a little bit of Ducie was with me. It gave me drive and a never-say-quit attitude. And my teammates saw it.

  “Jason, what’s wrong with you?” they’d say on a ninety-five-degree day while I was cheering them on. “Are you immune? Are you a machine?”

  I was a man on a mission. That constant reminder of Ducie made football easy.

  Don’t get me wrong: The sport is difficult. It demands a lot. But for the rest of my career at Carolina, I knew that no obstacle was too difficult, no challenge too hard. I was a match for pretty much anyone on the other side of the line, and if I ever did get beat on a play—if a defensive lineman ever got the best of me and knocked me to the ground—I’d bounce back and shake it off quickly. They say that quarterbacks need to have short memories; the same can be said of offensive linemen. Every once in a while, even the best get beat. The secret to being the best? To shake it off and get right back in the game—body, mind, and heart.

  Playing on the line, I was never going to get the broad recognition from the fans that quarterbacks or wide receivers or star pass rushers do. Offensive linemen are rarely destined for stardom. But the coaches knew. My teammates knew. The opposing teams knew. I developed the reputation of being one tough son of a gun.

  Jason Brown is tough, they’d say. Jason Brown has no quit in him. I was the guy you wanted to go to football battle with, the guy you wanted beside you. I strove to be that guy. After all, that’s the kind of man Ducie was—a man who would, and did, literally lay down his life for others. And, although I knew that football was a game, that nothing I did on my field of battle could be remotely compared with what Ducie did on his, I was determined to emulate my big brother—to be the sort of man he pushed me to be.