The last World Series Rene Van Hulle will ever see

— -- HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. -- They went on their first date to a Valentine's Day dance a few years after the Cubs lost the 1945 World Series. In the seven decades between that night and this one, Rene and Helene Van Hulle raised four kids, losing one of them a decade ago. They moved from the North Side to the suburbs, finally ending up here, in a small apartment with yellow walls, in their respective recliners, waiting on another World Series game to begin. She's 83, and he's 88. He's on oxygen all the time, dying, in the care of a hospice nurse. This is the last World Series he'll ever see.

Rene grew up on the corner of Racine and Waveland, a block from the ballpark. His dad was a janitor, and he became one, too. As a boy, he'd climb the fence and sneak into Wrigley Field. He spent four years in the Navy, repairing submarines; she waited three years, 11 months and 26 days for him to do his time and come home to get married. During that time apart, he'd mail her Easter corsages to match her outfit. The boy she met all those years ago is still in there; he loves roller coasters, stamp collecting and Wile E. Coyote. Sometimes he still holds a book above his head, with his arms locked, a kind of muscle memory from laying on his back with a wrench.?Tonight, he's wearing a T-shirt from his ship, the USS Orion. There's a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in the other room.

"If we win," his daughter Christine says, "we'll have a shot out of your bottle."

"We'll do that," he says.

He closes his eyes for the national anthem, gripping the oxygen tubes with both hands, tapping his left foot, mouthing the words. Soon he's tapping both feet. When he nods off a few minutes later, his daughter touches his knee gently. He wakes up as the game begins, and everyone is telling stories, about the trouble the girls got into and about how Rene sent great gifts home to Helene while they were dating -- the key piece of his strategy to win her over.

"It's still working," she says, smiling. "I still love him."

When the doctors placed him in hospice care, essentially sending him home to die about a year ago, he asked his girls if they'd take him back down to Wrigleyville, to see the place where he grew up. That trip brought back so many memories, the World Series season of 1938, and 1945 when all the men were coming back from the war. Driving his block, he still remembered the houses where his friends, nearly all of them dead now, grew up, and where they'd play. He remembered the old German bar, where his mom would help fry fish on Fridays.

He's remembering tonight.

"I like to reminisce," he says. "I ain't got that much else to do. It's one of the few joys of getting old."

As much as a sporting contest, Friday night's game served as a portal to that time and place. Cubs flags and banners decorated grave sites all over Chicago; at one suburban cemetery, an old man in a Cubs jacket laid a pennant in between his mother and father. At Rene's apartment, while the game stretched out on TV, Rene and Helene talked about the past. Two of his daughters hung out, and they heard some stories for the first time, leaning in rapt, desperate for every detail because soon it will be too late to ask. Every Easter, the union boss gave him a chocolate egg with a dollar bill in it. Sometimes he and his friends rented a party room in the local auditorium, bought some luncheon meat and a case of beer. He played softball for a team named the Jokers.

Even Helene learned some new things.

"Did you play baseball?" she asked.

He nodded.

"What position?" she asked.

"Left."

"Left what?"

He grinned.

"Left out," he said, making fun of his own complete lack of talent.

Over and over, they bring up Rene Jr., their son who died in 2007. He was beloved in the Chicago gay community, an activist and leader, and they'd often go hang out at the bar where he worked. Tonight, their daughter Laurie is wearing one of her brother's sweaters, turquoise and worn -- her good luck charm when the Cubs play. Rene Jr.'s name is spoken with love and a touch of regret; he loved the Cubs more than any of them. But, for a few minutes at a time as his name is said aloud, their son and brother is with them. They can hear his voice describing seeing the green field for the first time, after only seeing Wrigley on a black and white TV.

The nurse is sitting back watching, stunned, because she has been seeing Rene for months and this is the most upbeat and energetic he has been. That's the greatest gift the Cubs gave so many people around the city Friday night. Who knows how many great days Rene's family will have with him? Tonight, he was laughing and cracking jokes, the same sharp and quick man they've know all their lives. The game woke something in him, something that doesn't come out much anymore.

"I've never seen him this good," his nurse says.

The girls pour a round of drinks from the Blue Label bottle in the seventh inning, and his nurse says that he can have a sip. The hot whiskey hits his throat and stuns him a little. When the Cubs lose, he curses in Flemish -- the language of his parents, still burned into his memory -- and sinks back into his chair. His time is running short, but tonight, he was living, surrounded by his wife and two of his girls and by the memory of his departed son. He sat in his chair, watching one of the last baseball games he'll ever see. His eyes sparkled, and he looked content.