My mother passed away last month at the age of 85. After the services, my two brothers and I sat around her kitchen table in DeKalb, Illinois, sipping bourbon and talking about her and what a great mother she’d been to us.

Before long, the conversation drifted to our dad. He had died suddenly from a heart attack ten years before, in 2015. The bourbon was flowing enough that we started telling stories we hadn’t told in a while—some of them still a little raw, especially for my brother Ryan. He and Dad had a falling out and hadn’t spoken for the last year of his life, even though Ryan lived just down the road in Rockford.

Dad was a tough, old-school guy, a long-haul trucker for a big company out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where we’d lived as kids from about the 1960s to 1980. He was rarely home, and when he was, he’d march straight to our shared bedroom, where the three of us slept in bunk beds. If the room wasn’t neat, we got grounded. If our grades dipped below a C, grounded. If we back-talked Mom—whom he worshiped—we were grounded. Honestly, it felt like we spent half our teenage years grounded.

There was one rule, though, that bordered on sacred: on Sundays, the whole family gathered in front of the television to watch the Green Bay Packers. That wasn’t optional. It was religion. Even his company knew better than to schedule him for a run before the game ended. Lunch was at 11 a.m. sharp, and by kickoff, usually noon, our chores were done and the TV was on.

He tried to pass down his obsession with the Packers, particularly the glory days under Vince Lombardi. He spoke of them with almost mythic reverence: Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Carroll Dale, Paul Hornung. But his favorite was linebacker Ray Nitschke, probably because he was just as hard-headed as Dad. Bald, too. Danny got a laugh out of that.

At some point, we fell quiet, each of us slipping into our own memories. Then Ryan spoke up.

“You know Dad’s favorite subject, right? That 1967 Ice Bowl game. He could talk about it for hours—knew every player, every stat. But can you imagine sitting on metal bleachers at Lambeau Field in minus 13 degrees?”

The Ice Bowl. Played on December 31, 1967, between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. A legendary game. The field heating system had failed, leaving the turf frozen solid. The temperature dropped to 20 below. It was the game that sent the Packers to Super Bowl II. Down by three with 16 seconds left, Bart Starr called a play – Brown Right 31 Wedge – but kept the ball himself. Jerry Kramer and Ken Bowman made the crucial block, and Starr dove across the goal line. The Packers win.

Three straight NFL titles. Only the 1931 Packers had done that before or since.

Danny shook his head. “I’m as big a Packer fan as anyone, but no way in hell I’d sit through that game, not when it was on TV.”

“I’m with you,” Ryan said.

Danny laughed. “I remember Dad came home drunk as a skunk. I don’t think Mom spoke to him for three days.”

Then came a barrage of lewd jokes between my brothers about just how cold minus 13 really was. They brought up the rumor that Jerry Kramer had been offside on that final play – should’ve been flagged – and then returned to cracking jokes about Dad’s frozen backside. (I never claimed my brothers were refined.)

Eventually, they noticed I hadn’t said much.

Ryan glanced over. “What’s the matter, big brother? Cat got your tongue?”

“Yeah,” Danny added with a belch.

I stood up. “Be right back.”

As I left the room, their laughter trailed behind me – someone may have passed gas, based on the sound.

I went to the hall closet and pulled down an old wooden crate I’d tucked away years ago. I carried it back into the kitchen and set it on the table.

“What’s that?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah?” echoed Danny, never one for excess vocabulary.

I looked at them both. “After Dad died, Mom asked me to clean the attic. I found this up there, an old crate full of Dad’s stuff. I almost threw it out, but something made me take it home instead.”

I opened the lid and reached inside, pulling out a dusty 1967 Packers pennant. I handed it over.

Then came black-and-white autographed photos: Bart Starr, Jerry Kramer. Dad had worshiped those two.

“You’ve been sitting on this for ten years?” Ryan said.

“Oh, it gets better.”

Next was a signed photo of Ray Nitschke, addressed to our dad by name. Ryan asked to keep it. I handed it over. His eyes welled up.

I kept digging. A deflated football. A few old NFL cards, mostly Packers, a couple Bears, oddly enough, given Dad’s hatred of Chicago. Then a 1972 Packers-Bears game program, the Packers were victorious. Inside, Dad had scribbled notes and gotten an autograph from Jerry Tagge – an obscure quarterback from that season.

Finally, I excused myself and came back with an envelope that had also been in the box. I pulled out the contents and laid it on the table: a single, unused ticket to the Ice Bowl.

They stared at it, turning it over, puzzled.

“You guys don’t get it, do you?” I asked.

Blank stares.

“I didn’t either…at first,” I said. “Then it hit me. He didn’t go to that game.”

“Bull,” Ryan said. “He talked about that game for thirty years. I’ve told everyone and their brother that Dad was at that game.”

I looked at the two of them, both still staring at the pristine ticket.

“You know what I think?” I said. “I think he meant to go but couldn’t – his family came first.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “What stopped him?”

I hesitated, then got up and fetched the last item from the crate. a folded note tucked into the corner of the box. I’d read it years ago, but never quite knew what to make of it until now.

It was in Mom’s handwriting. I unfolded it and laid it flat on the table.

December 31, 1967

Jerry —
I took Danny to the ER. His fever spiked, and he was having trouble breathing. I’ll be there all night, I’m sure. The neighbors will check in on the other boys, but if you’re home before me, warm up some soup. Love you — M.

Danny squinted at it. “ER?”

I nodded. “Croup. You don’t remember, but Mom told me once it got bad – real bad. You were five.”

Danny blinked and looked down at the letter again. “So he stayed home with us.”

I nodded. “He was just getting back from a long trip. Said he’d be home around 9:00 AM, clean up, and would go to the game then. She knew he was coming home and left that note so he’d know where she had gone. He saw the note and didn’t go to the game. Never told anyone. But he couldn’t throw the ticket away, either. He kept it.”

Ryan sat back slowly, letting it sink in. “So all that talk, every story he told us, he was just… making himself the guy who got to go?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he was making peace with missing it. Who knows. But he missed the Ice Bowl for his kid. For us.”

Danny leaned back and let out a low whistle. “So the big family legend – the one we rolled our eyes at for years – was really just him covering up the best thing he ever did.”

Ryan’s voice softened. “And we never knew.”

I shrugged. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to.”

We sat there, quiet now, the note between us like a fourth presence at the table as large as Nitschke himself.

Danny looked over at me. “So what do we do with it?”

“With what?”

“This,” he said, gesturing around the table, the ticket, the photos, the letter, the bourbon buzz, the ache in all of us.

I took a breath. “We remember it right this time.”