How the Kansas City Chiefs saved a life, even as two precious ones were lost

I was 2 weeks old when I attended my first Chiefs game. It was an August 1989 preseason blowout delivered by Phil Simms’ New York Giants, and little did I know at the time, just two weeks prior I had shared a nursery with the woman I would one day fall in love with.

That’s right. My most favorite person to have ever graced this planet was born the same day as me, in the same Kansas City hospital, just 12 hours before I took my first breath. But after sharing that nursery together our first night on Earth, we went our separate ways. And though we grew up just 5 minutes down the road from each other, we did not officially meet until 26 years later.

My favorite person on Earth was Kaitlyn Clare Kelly Wright, and though she died almost two months ago to the day, sometimes it still seems impossible to refer to her in the past tense. My wife was funny, beautiful, kind, obnoxious and adventurous (we put our careers on hold in 2019 to travel the world before starting a family, and my God am I thankful that we chased our dreams in the present rather than wait for them to materialize later on).

She was steadfast in the belief that we can and should all do more to take care of this planet and, best of all, she was carefully growing the most beautiful little boy inside of her that you’d ever lay eyes on.

We were set to be first-time parents, and we couldn’t wait for our boy to arrive. Kaitlyn would sing to him inside her belly each night, and I would harmonize from the kitchen as best I could while preparing the meals we’d eat once he arrived in mid-January. But life has an uncanny ability to take our perfectly constructed Etch A Sketch plans and shake them furiously until nothing remains but a blank canvas, ready for new designs — even if you weren’t finished with the previous ones.

Kaitlyn was healthy in every imaginable way. She was a gymnast and she loved fruit. She enjoyed hiking and was hellbent on having a natural birth so that she might fully experience life’s greatest miracle as so many women had before her. We did everything we could to ensure her plans were possible: exercising on a regular basis and eating as close to a plant-based diet as a pregnant woman constantly craving bacon would allow.

So when I awoke at 4 a.m. on Dec. 8 to find her out of bed and in immeasurable pain, it was cause for concern. Her back was severely hurting, and the only way she could take a full breath was with me behind her, holding her arms straight above her head. She was weak and battling what would later be described by one of her physicians as a “once in a career” case of eclampsia — one of the worst this particular hospital had seen since opening in 1875.

It took less than 60 hours for us to go from snuggling in our bed, to losing our baby, to her joining him on the other side. This rare, unforeseen and unpreventable form of the disease worked so rapidly that by the time we reached the ICU, the swelling in her brain and eventual coma that it led to were irreversible. Our picture perfect sketch, shaken out of control. Our child, lost one month before his due date. My soulmate, now living only in my memories.

It’s an odd thing, having the ability to view your entire relationship as a complete unit from start to finish. I will forever know every detail of our our story together. Our book is 5 1/2 years long, and I wouldn’t change a word within it, but no more words will ever be written. No new chapters or sequels will exist in this lifetime.

Seventy-one hours passed between the time I found Kaitlyn out of bed to the moment I arrived back home after she was officially pronounced deceased. I was awake for 68 of them. Exhausted and heartbroken, I was involuntarily running through the motions of a life I wasn’t sure I wanted anymore. She died on a Thursday. Her organs were harvested for donations that Sunday morning, and later that afternoon I watched the Chiefs defeat the Dolphins 33-27 from my couch — our couch — while my parents called funeral homes.

Christmas and New Years came and went. I packed up and moved from our perfect little home that I could no longer afford financially or emotionally. Family, friends and wonderful strangers said outrageously kind things to get me through each day, and people I’d never met spent Christmas Day picking up trash in their communities to honor Kaitlyn’s name.

But to be completely honest, much of it was a blur: I would wake up, push through each day with the best support system one could ever hope to have, and I would cry — a lot. Then I would drift off to sleep, where on the nights I was lucky I would dream of my best friend and hear her perfect laugh once again. The days slowly merged together without much substance to show for them. But I do remember some things.

I remember Patrick Mahomes sending a chest-pass to Travis Kelce for a touchdown against the New Orleans Saints. I remember Tyrann Mathieu’s defense collecting rent and Mahomes and Demarcus Robinson saving the day in classic Showtime fashion vs. the Atlanta Falcons. And I definitely remember believing that Hennething is Possible as Chad Henne and Andy Reid showed the size of their, um, intellect against the Cleveland Browns in the Divisional round of the playoffs.

In a world where everything is a reminder of the life that Kaitlyn and I were so close to sharing*, football became my constant. And not just any football: a football team led by a coach you just can’t help but root for. A football team quarterbacked by someone who not only practices what he preaches, but embarrasses the opponent in such a gentle and respectful way that one would not be surprised if those same opponents were really just thankful to share the field with such a swell guy. A football team that is so fun to watch that if something extraordinary doesn’t happen, or they only win by a few points, you begin to feel cheated.

*Seriously, try to go just 30 minutes sometime without noticing something that reminds you about raising a family or being in a relationship. Examples abound in movies, TV shows and books. They are at the beach and they go shopping for groceries. They have snowball fights, share their meals with one another just to taste more items off the menu, and they take great satisfaction from living within the lyrics of your favorite music. And this is to say nothing of all the inside jokes that only you and your partner would understand

Chiefs football became my metronome. Wednesday wasn’t Wednesday. It was merely four days from getting to watch my team play again. Thursday wasn’t Thursday. It was an opportunity to watch any game while fully knowing that the broadcast was likely to reference my team. Friday, Saturday — the days leading up to Sunday.

And Sunday, the day we’ve all been waiting for. Monday brought one last game to witness just how much better my team was than all the rest. And then Tuesday. Sweet, sweet glorious Tuesday: The day of analysis. Still close enough to the recently played games to watch fresh highlights and listen to talking heads argue about things like toe-drag swag and angry runs, but at the same time just two days away from the football week starting anew.

Football was my refuge — a much-needed opportunity to turn off my brain for a bit — and without it, I’m just not sure where I’d be right now.

So while the score of this Super Bowl (and frankly the way we got to that result) wasn’t what anyone outside of Florida was hoping for, to me it was another chance to take a deep breath in this long-distance swim in which I never dreamed I’d be participating. One more opportunity to be whisked away from my unconscious reality so that I might watch my favorite team reinvent a game that has been a part of me just two fewer weeks than the person I love the most.

Of course I wanted the Chiefs to win. I expected them to win. And of course I’m disappointed about the play of the offensive line, taken aback by the drops from the usually reliable suspects, and disgusted at the sight of more yellow handkerchiefs than we ever care to see again. The result of Super Bowl LV is a disappointment no matter how you slice it.

But the run that got us there is something I’ll always be thankful for, and one I hope everyone in that organization might one day understand to be the thing that kept me moving when hardly anything else could.

To everyone at One Arrowhead Drive, thank you.

Sincerely,

Adam Wright, Section 305