Moving on

Miami's Wilfork focuses on life after parents' death

Vince Wilfork talks to reporters after Friday's team practice. AP

PHOENIX (AP) -- The thoughts and tears come when Vince Wilfork is alone, usually while he eats, watches television or lies in bed. And the sadness of losing both parents within six months hits harder than any opponent on the football field. The pain may never end, but the Miami defensive tackle expects it will get easier to handle, especially with so many good things ahead of him.

Wilfork has the national championship game against No. 2 Ohio State on Friday, the birth of his second child in February, his graduation next December and then a probable career in the NFL. He just wishes his parents could be around to share it all with him.

"It's not easy to do, but you have to look forward to things," Wilfork said. "If I dwell on my mother and my day all the time, I'll be a sad person, and I know they wouldn't want me to do that. ... They will be very, very, very missed, but I'll move on from here and make the best of it."

Having football to fall back on helps.

Wilfork practiced with the top-ranked Hurricanes on Friday for the first time since his mother's death on Dec. 16. He missed more than a week of practice, and coaches and teammates weren't sure he would return for the Fiesta Bowl. It would have been easy for him to stay home, and who would have blamed him?

But Wilfork never considered skipping the game. He knew all along he would be here. His parents wouldn't have it any other way.

"Football is my release," he said. "Everything that I have inside that's bad, I can come out here and make a couple of things happen that will make me happy and get me going. That's a good, positive thing for me to have football on my side."

Barbara Wilfork, 46, died five weeks after suffering a stroke Nov. 7. Her son missed the Tennessee game to be near her, then returned to school. Fortunately, he grew up about 60 miles north of Miami's campus, making it possible for him to visit her regularly in the hospital.

So before school, after practice, sometimes between studying videotape and working out, Wilfork would call to tell her he was coming. She would ask, how long? He would say half an hour, and when 30 minutes had passed, his cell phone would ring. "Where you at?" she'd ask. "I'll be there in five minutes," he said.

"When I got there, she would see me walking in that door and it would just brighten up her day with that big smile of hers," Wilfork said.

Her smile is one of the things he'll miss most. It had come to mean much more since his father, who "taught me everything I know," died in June from kidney failure as a result of diabetes.

Wilfork spent countless days by his father's hospital bedside, too, trying to understand all the machines and medications. David Wilfork, 48, died just days after asking for and receiving his son for national championship ring.

"He was everything to me. Everything," Wilfork said. "There wasn't a day that passed that I didn't talk to him. If I needed someone to talk to, I always turned to him."

Now Wilfork finds himself focused on the future: