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The Ties That Bind a Father and Son

By Jason La Canfora
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page D01

When Shawn Springs walks into the locker room at Texas Stadium, he is 7 years old again, scampering around his idols, tossing around a football with the sons of other players. It is Thanksgiving, and Springs has made the annual holiday trip to Dallas to be with his father, Ron, a gregarious Dallas running back on a powerhouse team. He will eat a late turkey dinner after the game and sleep in his Cowboys pajamas at night. When Springs returns to the stadium today as a member of the Washington Redskins, those childhood memories will be tinged by painful realities: That his father will be lying in a hospital 15 minutes away in a coma. That doctors there are saying he is essentially brain dead. That someday soon the Springs family might turn off the machines that are keeping him alive.

"My dad's in a situation where you're faced with a tough choice, and you pray for a miracle that God's able to heal him," Springs said. "Then at the same time you've got to be realistic and say, 'What if that doesn't happen? Are we willing to come look at dad every day and say he's a vegetable, or do you say maybe it's time for us to make another decision?'

"And that might be taking him off the feeding tube, but no one wants to feel responsible for that, or feel like they are killing somebody, and that's a tough decision, because you can't really win. The right thing to do, maybe it's that he wouldn't want to live like this, then you think about my stepmom, and she thinks about it like, 'If you did that then you would feel like you're giving up on him.' "

The Ties That Bind a Father and Son - washingtonpost.com