When I think about the Broatch family, I imagine a lit candle in their backyard in Milford and a kid playing Wiffle ball.
The kid was their son, Britton John Broatch, who seemed to be in great health until one day, at age 25, he suddenly collapsed from a brain aneurysm.
His parents and siblings were so devastated that all they could think to do was take his ashes to his favorite place on earth, Fenway Park, and scatter them there.
I wrote about this in my column May 18. I described how the Red Sox management authorized the Broatches to have their ceremony at home plate, how the grounds crew stopped and placed their hats over their hearts.
This was in 2003. If you are a baseball fan, or a student of history, you will know that the following year the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. You might even make a connection between that historic feat and Britton John Broatch's ashes.
Since the Broatches did their ceremony, as more and more people have wanted to scatter their relatives' ashes at Fenway, the Sox owners have stopped honoring such requests. You have to do it in a secretive way, perhaps leaning over a railing while no authority figures are looking.
The Broatches think this is too bad. "It should be decided on a case-by-case basis," Jim Broatch told me. "The Cubs do it that way."
Broatch think the Yankees' owners should also let it be done, "especially this year." He alluded to this being the final year of the original Yankee Stadium. (As a fan of that ballclub, I can think of few better places for my remains.)
Britton's mom, Cydney Broatch, said those ashes at Fenway are "a representation of Britton being there forever."
When they look around that backyard, which has the bench donated by friends inscribed with their son's name and the adjacent light fixture with the candle they light every night in Britton's memory, they also see him there as a kid, playing Wiffle ball for hour upon hour in the fading light.
In his memory they stage the annual Britton John Broatch Wiffle Tournament. To find out more, go to http://thebjbtournament.com.
It's a charity event, to raise scholarship money in Britton's name. This year it'll be held at Foran High School in Milford, on July 12. You oughta go. You oughta sign up.
Knowing this family, it'll be fun. And as Cydney Broatch said when asked to describe her boy, she simply said, "He was fun. Just fun."

The house is three blocks away from mine.
While my family and I were in bed, peacefully amidst our dreams late Tuesday night, three blocks away a 55-year-old woman was being tied up and struck repeatedly in the head with a baseball bat.
The three intruders also broke both of her hands.
This latest home invasion, in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, comes even before we brace for the first anniversary of the horrendous triple murder in Cheshire.
This could be an awful summer. The economy is going down the tubes, kids can't get jobs or find anything meaningful to do with themselves, so they hang out, get bored, get bad ideas.
But what kind of a sick mind finds sport in wielding a baseball bat against a 55-year-old woman?
Everybody's talking about it in our neighborhood, of course, and a meeting is being planned next Monday to air all of the concerns. There is talk of a neighborhood security patrol, perhaps to be funded by residents. Would I contribute? You bet.
Now my wife and I are talking to our kids again about the need to be careful, to lock those doors, especially the back one. You don't want to scare them, but you have to warn them.
We're glad we have a dog.
Meanwhile, a 17-year-old kid was arrested and he was in court today. I wasn't there for that event, but soon I will be in a courtroom observing him, as that's my job, especially when defendants get transferred to the "Part A" docket in the Superior Court building at Church and Wall streets.
I'll probably be tracking that kid and two co-defendants through the legal process in the months and years to come. One day many months from now, if they plead guilty or are convicted, I'll probably see that strong-seeming 55-year-old woman walk into one of those courtrooms and tell her story.
And I, along with everybody else with any sense and humanity, will wonder again what would possess somebody to do such a thing.
And we lock our doors.