Nelson fighting through devastating loss

Reggie Nelson was relegated, however, to ruling the conversation in absentia.

It simply is too soon, by Nelson's own estimation, to talk calmly and openly to anyone outside the Florida football family about the death of his mother, Mary Lakes, taken by breast cancer at 46.

The news came Dec. 21, just as Nelson was preparing to leave campus for Christmas break at his Melbourne, Fla., home. No public comment, in written form or otherwise, has come from the All-American free safety since then.

There really is no need.

Words weren't made for times like this. Those fitted to the occasion are robotic, unreal, which pretty much describes the sensation of preparing for the grandest event of the college football season while grappling with the most devastating event of a young lifetime.

"He is doing great," said Florida coach Urban Meyer, who lost his mother to cancer six years ago and spoke privately with Nelson about skipping this and all other meetings with the media in advance of the national title game between Florida and Ohio State.

"Will focus be an issue? Of course it will. But I think he is that good of a player to handle it."

Until now, a vital part of the preparation was a pre-game call from his mother, a middle-school custodian diagnosed with cancer in 2003. The Florida coaching staff forbids cell phone conversations within their presence on game day, but in Nelson's case they always made an exception.

Nelson and his mom, they were best friends, possessed with the same buoyant smile, joined at the heart. He would have bought her a new house, befitting a queen, with the first-round NFL contract that Nelson is expected to get this spring. Now, maybe he'll stay around for his senior year with the Gators.

Everything is conjecture now. Every possibility is a whisper of what it might have been, back before Nelson's mom learned of an illness she preferred to keep secret. Reggie was off playing junior college football in Kansas at that time. His mom bought wigs, hoping he wouldn't notice the effects of chemotherapy on the rare trips home.

It didn't work. Nothing ever did, save the one day last September when Mary Lakes got to attend a Gator home game with the aid of an oxygen tank. Reggie came roaring out of the tunnel at the Swamp like never before, rocketed by hope, propelled by pride.

Monday night, when Florida plays Ohio State for the national championship, that will be so different. Nelson will take the field at University of Phoenix Stadium in the company of his teammates, screaming if he wants to, hitting as he must. The Gators need him to have a chance against the Buckeyes, but Nelson needs them more.

"He still smiles a lot," said cornerback Ryan Smith, Nelson's roommate said. "It's the same old Reggie. He's having to fight this tough thing, though, and he's fighting it, believe me."

That's saying something, for there is no grittier Gator. Nelson takes on the world in the defensive secondary, often left alone in the deep middle of the field, by design, to cover whoever or whatever comes free from one sideline to the other.

"He's the last man standing when it is time to stop the pass or the run," said Florida defensive tackle Joe Cohen. "I am just glad that we have him back there."

In a season marked by close victories, Florida probably wouldn't have made it to 12-1 without him. Nelson returned an interception 70 yards for a touchdown to put Alabama away. He picked off two passes in a 21-20 win at Tennessee and blocked a punt against LSU.

While scores of Florida players posed happily beside the crystal national championship trophy Friday, Nelson was conspicuously missing.

Heartbreaking to imagine him back at the hotel, with his silent cell phone, with his thoughts.

If the same old Reggie really can be found again, that is when he will show up. Out of the tunnel, out of the shadows, into the midst of a chaos that, this time around, is of his own making.