As the 2026 NFL and college football seasons kick off, I have found myself carrying a darkness that I could not quite explain. Football has always been something I look forward to, so I knew something felt different this year, but I could not immediately put my finger on what it was. Last weekend should have been nothing but joy. My brother Step, my good friend Eric, and I finally took one of those “guys’ trips” we had been talking about doing for years. We made our way to Waco, Texas, to watch Prairie View A&M take on Baylor, and before the game we spent some time sightseeing and enjoying the city. It was football, fellowship, plenty of laughs, and a chance for three guys to get away for a while. It was the kind of weekend that should have been good for the soul, and in many ways it was.
One of the places we visited was the Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and somewhere in that moment it finally dawned on me what I had been feeling. The heaviness was grief. It was Nekia. Earlier this year, I lost my youngest brother, and there are times when I feel like I am slowly finding my way back to something that resembles normal. I laugh, work, travel, build, speak, spend time with the people I love, and continue doing all of the things life requires of me. Then there are moments like this when grief quietly reminds me that there really is no going back to the normal I knew before February 8.
I imagine there will be millions more moments like this because Nekia and I shared too much life for there not to be. We shared football, Navy service, trips to the VA, our families, the loss of our parents, childhood memories that only siblings can fully understand, and more recently, even an investment group we formed together. We were still planning things. We were still talking about tomorrow. I think that is one of the things about grief that I am only beginning to understand. When someone you love dies, they leave, but all of the plans you made with them do not disappear at the same time. Neither do the routines, the inside jokes, the conversations you expected to have, or the instinct to pick up the phone and tell them something you know they would appreciate.
Nekia was a big Raiders fan, which remains one of the great disappointments of my life as a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan. I think his loyalty may have started because the Raiders had a linebacker during our childhood named Aaron Wallace, who was also from Texas. My dad used to joke that Aaron Wallace was his son, and maybe somewhere in Nekia’s young mind he decided that meant the man must have been his brother. Who knows? At this point, I am simply trying to create a sane explanation for why somebody raised in our family would choose the Raiders over the Cowboys. Even writing that makes me smile, and I am learning that this is grief too. It is not always crying or sitting alone in sadness. Sometimes grief is laughing at something only you and the person you lost would completely understand, and then feeling the ache that comes from realizing there is one less person here who understands the joke.
That weekend in Waco reminded me that grief can find you anywhere. It can be triggered by a building, a song, a football game, a familiar smell, an old photograph, or something somebody says without having any idea what their words just awakened inside you. You can be surrounded by people you love, having an incredible time, laughing harder than you have laughed in weeks, and still feel an emptiness that you cannot explain to anyone around you. Happiness and grief apparently have no problem occupying the same space.
I wanted to share these thoughts because I never know who my words may reach at exactly the moment they need them. If you are dealing with grief, know that you are not alone, and please do not assume that the people who appear strongest among us are somehow exempt from having dark or weak moments. We aren’t. Those of us who spend our lives encouraging other people still hurt. We still have moments when we do not have the answers. We still wake up some mornings feeling stronger than we expected and other mornings wondering why something that happened months ago suddenly feels like it happened yesterday.
I am also beginning to realize that maybe healing is not about getting “back to normal” at all. The more I experience grief, the more I question whether that place even exists anymore. Maybe healing is learning how to carry love and loss in the same heart without allowing either one to erase the other. Maybe it is accepting that some days the memories will make you laugh and other days those same memories will break your heart, and neither reaction means you are moving forward or backward. It simply means you loved somebody enough for their absence to matter.
Nekia left us on February 8, 2026, the night of the Super Bowl. Of all nights, it had to be the biggest night in football. That means for the rest of my life, one of America’s biggest celebrations will carry a completely different meaning for me. Every Super Bowl will mark another year without my little brother, every new football season will bring memories, and every Raiders game will probably make me think about that ridiculous Aaron Wallace story and wonder again how Nekia managed to get football so wrong.
Football will never be the same for me, and the truth is, neither will I. I am slowly learning that maybe I am not supposed to be.
