Remember His Name

He pulled out the video of Pat's memorial service and watched it again and again, 15 times, crying and murmuring, "I miss you, I wish you were here." He and Tammy wrapped each other in a head-to-toe hug and wept.

He realized that it would take a lot more than hoisting each beer to Pat before he drank it, more than wearing a silver bracelet engraved with Pat's name and the date of Pat's death. If he really treasured his lost friend, he'd begin living by the values he had treasured in Pat. So Russ dug in, began scribbling reminders to himself about goals and personal responsibility and sticking them everywhere. He cut way back on his drinking. He wrote a letter to Pat, thanking him for showing him how to change his life.

But life hammered him again. It was the night after Maverick underwent heart surgery, when he was five months old, and all at once arched his back and froze as Russ and Tammy stared down at him. Suddenly the nurse was shouting "Code blue!" and a dozen people were storming in, ordering Russ and Tammy to get out, leaving them in the hallways watching their child turning gray and flopping like a fish as doctors and nurses pounded on him, shoved tubes into him, sliced open his chest and began massaging his heart. Still they couldn't get it beating. "Get back from the doorway!" one cried to Russ. "You're at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder!"

"I've already got it!" Russ cried back.

His son slipping away in front of his eyes, Russ found himself doing the strangest thing, pleading in his head, If you just get him through this, Pat, I'll do EVERYTHING I can to be the best I can be. I don't care how you give him back to me, even if he's a vegetable and I have to feed him through a tube when he's 75, please, I don't care, just keep him alive! That's right: a guy who didn't believe in an afterlife praying to another guy who didn't believe in an afterlife--and who was dead--to rescue his boy.

A nurse came out finally and told them that Maverick's brain had gone without oxygen for nearly an hour, that he'd suffered massive liver and kidney damage and that even if he survived, he might never walk, talk or see.

Two more surgeries were done, and then the damnedest things began to happen. His eyes opened and slowly began to focus, then one day he grinned, then one day his hand began grabbing his parents' fingers and squeezing, just like any other kid's, and Russ couldn't help feeling that somehow it was because of Pat, and that now he had to live up to that promise he'd made.

But then that myth fell apart too. On Sunday, near midnight--six months after that terrifying night in the hospital--Maverick began vomiting blood. Apparently, his pulmonary artery had ruptured, and three hours later the 11-month-old baby was dead.

So Russ is�going to walk around forever with the story he was holding for his son. That's the thing about Pat. He won't go away, because he's become a symbol of our best side and how we'll give even that away for a soothing lie. We'll hear about people who believe in myths more than ever because of Pat, and about people who have lost that belief because of him. We'll hear about young people coming out of the Pat Tillman Foundation's leadership program at Arizona State and fanning out, in Pat's name, to change the world.

Perhaps, in the aftermath of the current criminal investigation, we will hear another version of Pat's story from the officers who made the decisions the day he died. Then the trigger-pullers--the ones perhaps not lucky enough to have raced out of a pizza parlor at 17 and learned what can happen to a man when his adrenaline's up and he's certain he's doing the right thing--might come forward with their Pat, as well. We'll read books about him and likely watch movies made by men who went to Afghanistan and walked in that canyon in search of his spirit.