On the last perfect night of her life, their perfect mother danced beneath the sky of a thousand stars.
It was almost midnight when Jaime Ruud jittered across the deck of a pontoon boat, singing and laughing, her right arm circling in the air in what was known as her "tick-tock dance.'' The boat's floodlight transformed the smooth surface of the water into gold, and the music was loud enough to wake the neighbors.
For most of her life, her oldest son said, Jaime "danced like someone's mom.'' This night, she danced as if there were no tomorrow.
''We are family ... I've got all my sisters with me.''
As Jaime sang, the words didn't seem quite as dated or corny as you might expect. She was surrounded by family and friends at Cross Lake, their Minnesota getaway. The linebackers in her life had gone to bed, spoilsports that they were, so the women had taken the boat out on the lake.
The temperature was a perfect 75 degrees. The music was perfect. The moment was perfect.
For Jaime's son Barrett, in the sweetest and saddest of ways, she is still on that boat, and the memory is perfect.
• • •
Even now, even a thousand nights later, it does not take much for the son to summon her memory.
Bucs linebacker Barrett Ruud sits in a bare room at One Buc Place in Tampa and closes his eyes. He imagines her swaying and singing on that boat. In his mind, she is wearing cutoff jeans and her worn University of Nebraska sweat shirt. Nebraska was his school, their school, the only school whose colors she wore.
-- Gary Shelton, St. Petersburg Times
