Two weeks ago, everyone couldn’t stop talking about Joel Embiid’s three-pointer for the 76ers–what can you do in .8 seconds? The future seemed limitless. Sunday’s talk was about his injury–could this be the end?

I have something to say about the whole thing. Only my head is spinning with two girls graduating (one from middle school and the other from high school) come June.

Maybe it’s because life’s throwing me a lot of endings, too, but Embiid’s tragic news makes me sad. But it’s not why you might think.

This brings us to NBA Top 75 Story #1. It’s where it all started.

I’d go to professional basketball games the way other kids went to birthday parties starting at three years old. The noise would hurt my ears, and I’d cry. No one had considered the possibility that noise could be detrimental, but we didn’t use car seats back then either.

But it would all be worth it when Dad would stop what he was doing before the game and wave at me. Mom would nudge me and say, “Look. Daddy’s waving at you.”

I’d say, “No he’s not.”

And she’d say more emphatically, “Yes, he’s waving at you.”

I couldn’t understand how my Dad could spot me in a crowd of people like that. How’d he even know where I was sitting? Not that I knew what he was doing in the center of all that attention. It was enough to know he’d single me out in the middle of all that chaos. He must love me to stop what he was doing to wave to me.

But there was the downside. Dad would pack his bag, and depending on which one it was, I’d know if my world was about to end.

He’d be dancing and lip-synching in his hairbrush to Earth, Wind & Fire, or Marvin Gaye one minute, and then he’d carry his bag down the curvy front steps and stop at the front door the next.

If it were a home game, I’d be in luck. It would be only one bag, and it wouldn’t be so bulky, which meant that he was going to work, and he’d be in bed when I woke up the next day.

But when it was his other bag, I knew he was leaving for a long time.

I’d grab his one leg and wrap my hands around it like a tree trunk with a body attached somewhere up top.

Eventually, he’d pull away and close the door, and I’d plop down on the cold front hall tiles like a discarded piece of Halloween candy.

Mom would pick me up and carry me to the kitchen, hoping to cheer me up.

The next day she’d say, “Your Daddy’s on TV. You want to see?” She’d point out Dad; it was hard to find him, and sometimes I’d have to be patient, but I’d finally get to see him, and then it was time for bed.

After the Globetrotters performed at a halftime show, I said to my Dad, “Too bad you can’t do what they can do.” So he flipped the ball on his finger like a Globetrotter. And I said, “That’s more fun. Why doesn’t Daddy do that, instead?”

But the memories of my Dad playing ball came to an end when I was in first grade and my sister was only two so she remembers none of it. Mom explained that Dad was in the hospital, but he was fine and there was nothing for me to worry about, and sent me to school. It didn’t seem like a big deal–usually he was on a court, now he was in the hospital. But my teacher came up to me and asked how my Dad was doing. She was a huge Sixer fan, and she loved following my Dad’s career. She told me he had a bad injury, and his career might be over. “This could be it.”

She was so concerned, she wanted us to write him a get-well-soon letter. I assumed we were learning how to write a letter (it was school after all) so when she wrote a sample letter on the chalkboard to “Dear Mr. Cunningham,” I followed her lead and wrote “Dear Mr. Cunningham” to my own Dad.

We handed in our letters, and she sent them to my Dad. It wasn’t a school thing after all. And he got a big kick out of the fact that I didn’t write Dear Dad. If things were that bad for him, he didn’t show it. I never would have known he tore his meniscus and that his career as a 76er had ended. He was home, and that seemed to be all that mattered. And then I got excited–maybe now he could get a real job, you know, with a secretary and an office.

But that’s how Dad’s basketball playing career ended-without any warning that it was over. Sometimes the end is decided for us.

Different than with my daughters, I’ve known for a long time it’s time for them to move on. I don’t have it all under control the way my Dad did when the end came for him. If he was ever sad that his career had ended, he never showed it.

Oh, but I feel like that little girl clinging to my Dad’s legs again. And all I can hear is him saying, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”

No one wants the end to come, but sometimes it’s so sad when it does.

There’s a price to pay for doing what you love, for at some point it must come to an end. We look at the loss when we still can’t see the excitement of the new beginning that’s yet to unfold.

Yes, we’re sad that Embiid got hurt, but maybe because it reminds us of the frailty of our lives. Sometimes we get hurt, and it feels like a chapter of our lives is over. Even though we feel shattered, we need to regroup and start all over again.