Mark Wright

My inimitable father, Mark Hilton Wright, rejected the concept of his own funeral. "I don't like any of the options," he'd say. These pieties, these customs, they weren't for him. He lived on his own terms, largely untethered. But there was an exception.

For 39 years, Dad let me tether. Being his boy, attached to him, was one of the great joys of my life. We stitched together and hurtled through time like the blood-red laces in a fastball's seams.

It ends, though, a baseball game. Every game ends. Everybody who plays hangs 'em up. Dad fought, courageously, against a rare cancer. He fouled off a lot of pitches. But on Monday, September 15, 2025-a payday, fitting for a man who was a CPA-Mark ended his last at-bat on this earthly field. He got called up to that cosmic ballpark of dreams, joining his boyhood heroes Thurman Munson and Mickey Mantle.

He died comfortably, peacefully, under the dutiful watch of professional caretakers. And he did so after much-much-so much cacophonous snoring. When I saw him, on his last day, these snores soothed me. I imagined them as I heard them when I was a kid: reverberating off the walls of my childhood home, emanating with force from his face as he dozed off, in his beloved recliner, the whole space lit by the lazy haze of a Texas Sunday. He'd be watching golf, nodding in and out, completely at ease.

Dad may not have had the stomach for social conventions. But he possessed a remarkable appetite for life's delicacies. He loved food (Tex-Mex enchiladas, piquant salsas, buttermilk fried chicken). He loved learning (he read endlessly, always sending me links, articles, books). He loved rock-n-roll (his ol' Chevy pickup playin' Tom Petty, Steely Dan). And, of course, he loved sports (fanatically and tragically so, since his chief obsession was the Dallas Cowboys).

Growing up in Marshall, Texas, Mark excelled athletically-at football, baseball, basketball, golf. He had long arms, pinpoint focus; he processed information quickly, he was coordinated, agile, deliberate. He was cool under pressure.

He knew so much about sports: how they worked, the strategies, the players. Knowing all this, and bestowing all this, discussing it all-sports talk!-it animated him. It lit him up. I learned so much from sharing in that light. As a kid, I thought he knew everything. As a kid, I was awestruck.

He included me in everything-conversations with his friends, road trips and errands, dining out for margaritas and combo platters, going to the movies. We'd talk about it afterward; we'd talk about everything. He emailed me tenaciously; he loved to send emails. He really cared what I thought. He made me feel like the most interesting person he'd ever met. Is there, could there be, an act of love more meaningful than this? I can scarcely imagine one.

In 2017 we went to Game 5 of the World Series. It was the first time either of us had ever been; it was the only time he would ever go. The Astros hosted the Dodgers; the game went into extra innings. The 'Stros would prevail; later, they would go on to win the first World Series title in the team's history.

What a game it was! And what a time we had, witnessing history, stitched together as seams. It is my absolute favorite memory. And not just because it was the World Series. It's because being around him, in his light, in this way, it inflated me and sent me soaring, a balloon dancing on a cloud.

Leonard Cohen said: "We're all on one road, and we're only passin' through; glad that I ran into you." Glad that I ran into you, Dad. Snore soundly. We won't have a funeral; we'll just look, awestruck, at the light, at the clouds.

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