This has been about 3/4 years ago. My wife had been diagnosed with Hodgkins and was undergoing chemo treatments and that meant losing her hair.
While most of her hair was gone, she had been able to hang onto the longer parts on the back of her head for quite some time. She had taken to "hiding" her condition by wearing all sorts of cute, girly ball caps that friends and family had donated to the cause.
I had been my son's baseball coach since he was 5 years old, and he was now 11 and playing travel ball. This particular weekend was Mother's Day weekend and time for the annual Mother's Day baseball tournament that we entered.
That Saturday morning, everything seemed to be going fine, until my wife got out of the shower with a towel on her head and tears in her eyes. She asked me to meet her in the bedroom, where she very tearfully showed me the thatch of hair that had previously holding precariously to the back of her head. It had come off in the shower, and she was now.....completely bald. She couldn't go with us.
My son and I left for the Saturday morning game with heavy hearts, but knew we had to do what we had to do.
In order to fully absorb the impact of this story, you also need to know about my 5 year old daughter. She was a VERY crafty, and artistic little 5 year old. There was very little she couldn't create or fix with scotch tape, scissors, and a stapler.
Just before first pitch, my cell phone rang, and my wife (this time with tears of joy) told me they were on their way, she'd explain when they got there.
Turns out, my daughter had taken that thatch of hair and stapled it into one of the cute, girly ball caps, complete with a little "pony tail" sticking out the hole in back.
My wife wore those hats.....just like that for about 6 months. Nobody but our closest friends ever knew.
We didn't do real well in that tourney, but she beat the cancer, and I was never more proud of my little family than that day.