I knocked on the office door, and the old man answered. He was hunched over, with sunken eyes and brown skin that looked weathered. He wore a blue Members Only jacket, denim jeans and white Reebok sneakers. When he walked, his feet shuffled, reminding me of my 83-year-old grandmother making her way through her Florida assisted living community.
The date was Feb. 15, 1999, and I was visiting a suburban Chicago office complex to meet Walter Payton, the Bears' Hall of Fame running back who had recently announced that he was suffering from primary sclerosing chonlangitis, a rare (and deadly) liver disease. I was assigned the piece by Sports Illustrated, which wanted to report the details of Payton's illness.
"Excuse me," I said to the senior citizen. "Is Wal--"
Then, in a moment of horror, I stopped speaking.
Staring deeper into the man's face, beneath his yellow jaundiced eyes and saddened expression, I came to a crushing realization: This was Walter Payton. And he was dying.