Solo Hope Solo (online e book reading .TXT) 📖

VI.

Marcus didn’t kill me, and we put together a moving memorial service. Everyone helped, including Cheryl, who found photos, helped write the obituary, got the programs printed and hand-folded them. We held the service at Hilltop; my father had made a lot of friends, and there was an outpouring of love and respect.

From every person who spoke, we learned something remarkable about my father. When he had been homeless, he had dressed up as Santa every year at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, bringing joy to young children who were suffering. In the 1990s, when he was still living on the streets, he donated $35,000 in video equipment to that pediatric ward (where my father got all that electronic equipment remained a mystery that I decided was better left unexplored). At Hilltop he’d taught half the residents—men and women—how to play poker, arranging big games for dimes and nickels. He had wooed the Japanese ladies who lived at Hilltop with exotic mushrooms that his friend Mark picked in the woods and brought to him by the bagful. Mark brought a small bonsai tree to the service in his honor. Marcus’s new dog Blue—who had replaced my dad’s old friend Henry—was there. My grandparents came and Grandma Alice assured us that my father had been a Christian and that we would see him again. That eased our pain a bit.

My oldest brother, David, didn’t attend the service, which upset me. Thanks to Marcus, David and my father had reconnected in recent years. The three of them had gone out to dinner one night when David was in Seattle on business. David’s birthday is June 12, and my father had called him to wish him a happy birthday just three days before he died. In David’s eyes, they had found some closure and peace in their relationship, and that was enough for him. But I still felt that David should have come to the memorial, to support Marcus and me, and to pay his respects. It was his father, for God’s sake, the only one he would ever have.

My sister, Terry, did attend. She had never seen my father after the day she called the police on him, seven years earlier.

I was bitter that my father had died with the murder of Mike Emert still looming over him. The police had continued to harass him for years, and the case remained unsolved, a frustrating and sad episode that was proof to him that the authorities couldn’t be trusted. Dad had been at peace with a lot in his life when he died, but not with that lingering stain. He spent hours thinking about it, going over details with Marcus, hoping to try to figure out what really happened.

When it was my turn to speak at the memorial, I said my father often seemed stuck in his ways but that he actually took computer classes to learn how to send me e-mails when I was away. He spent hours figuring out how to log on to the computer and poking at the keys to come up with a two-line e-mail saying he missed me. Sometimes he would mistakenly erase his finished product and have to start all over. He always laughed at himself when he told me about his technological struggles. In almost every e-mail he would write the same thing:

Baby Hope, be safe, have fun, go with your vibes, smile and be happy. You are the best. Love, Pops.

I told how he had recently opened a bank account after a lifetime of keeping his money under his mattress. I told the secret of his happiness that he had passed along to me. “He guarded each and every memory with his whole heart,” I said. “He was fueled by the love he shared with his friends and family, the moments between them, and he relived those happy memories over and over, bringing a new and fresh smile to his face each time. He knew that life could always be worse, so it was important to find joy in the simple things in life. My dad always said to me: ‘Baby Hope, memories are for you, and nobody can take them away.’ ”

I ended by saying that my father would always be at my side and in the goal.

After the service, Marcus gathered his belongings from Hilltop. I joined him before he shut the door and saw the objects my father had carried from place to place, through the rain and cold, for so many years. The home-run ball Marcus had given him. The etched rock. A signed dollar bill from David from 1977. His carefully maintained scrapbooks were filled with pictures and keepsakes from all four of us: ticket stubs to David’s football games, pictures of Terry, a letter from young David telling him about the 1980 Lakers-Sonics playoff games that ended with a plaintive, “I miss you Dad, I really love you a lot Dad.” There were clippings about Dominic Woody’s minor league baseball career—my dad had coached him back in Richland. There were letters in childish blocky writing to him from Marcus and me. My dad kept everything, carrying it with him for years through the Seattle rain. He had catalogued it and written little notes with observations and messages of love for his children.

Another scrapbook was filled with newspaper clippings, photos, and computer printouts detailing my entire soccer career, from Richland High to UW to the WUSA and all of my time with the national team. Everything was arranged in chronological order and carefully annotated. There was a Christmas card from Sofia, to “Mr. Italy,” as she called my dad. There was an e-mail from me scolding him about watching his diet. I turned to the last page of the scrapbook. At the top, in my father’s blocky handwriting, he had written: HOPE: WORLD CUP, 2007.

The page was blank.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Shadows

The ashes sifted through my fingers and floated on the still water of the lake