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The 4-year-old talked to his mother, told her he loved her.
But he wasn't sure she could hear him.
He touched her hand, kissed her forehead.
But he wasn't sure she could feel him.
That 4-year-old, Landan Left, knew that his mother, Yolanda Left, couldn't see him from her hospital bed that early August afternoon in 2013. Couldn't talk to him. Couldn't kiss him back.
"She wasn't saying anything," said Left, now a 17-year-old Pearl-Cohn senior. "But it was great to see her, know that she's there. I like to believe she knew I was there."
Yolanda Left suffered a massive
heart attack three weeks after Landan was born, leaving her in a coma for nearly four years until she died Aug. 8, 2013. She was 37.
Landan's father, Robert Left, picked him up from football practice that day. He'd received news from doctors that she had become unresponsive. That the end was near. Landan's older brother, Robert, also was in the car.
"I was like, 'They can hook her back up to a machine, something to breathe for her, or she can go and live with God until we get (to heaven) and see her again,' " the elder Robert told his children. "They both said, 'Well, Daddy, we'll let her go live with God and eventually we'll see her.' "
That is the first memory Landan Left has of his mother.
Her funeral was his last.
'I call her my mom'
The 4-year-old boy's mind couldn't wrap itself around the moment, the grief that was to come.
Around the inevitable "what-ifs" that would gnaw at him he grew older.
All he knew was he never would really know his mom, except through old stories and photos of her that, to this day, are set out at the Left's home in Madison.
"She's still a big part of our lives," said Terika Left, who married Robert after Yolanda died and, along with Robert's mother, helped raise Landan and his brother.
"She loved me like I was her own," Landan said of Terika. "So I call her my mom. ... It makes it pretty easy. They always make sure I get what I need and they just ask me to repay them by doing my part in school, on the field."
Left has done the latter, all right. He's earned himself a football scholarship to Western Kentucky.
Still, there are times Landan has wondered to himself how different his life might be if his mother hadn't died.
Would they live where they live?
What about all the memories she wasn't there for?
But those thoughts are quickly quelled when Landan remembers his father watching the movie "The Butterfly Effect," a film about altering time and changing the future, about how a random event can cause a chain reaction in life and in history.
"I feel like God has a plan for everyone," Landan said. "I just follow my plan. He blessed me with another mother to step in, and a great father."
'We got extra beds'
Landan's father has ties to Pearl-Cohn dating back to 2010, when he became a volunteer coach and mentor for the program.
He's a father who made the high school a second home for his own children and whose house became a home for Pearl-Cohn kids with troubled lives to stay at for as long as they needed. To feel what it's like to have a home-cooked, family meal. To have their own, safe place to sleep.
"A lot of them said they never sat down at a dinner table with their family to have a meal," Landan's father said. "We kind of opened up that door, like, 'Before you go out on the streets and do anything you'll regret, just know that our door is always open to you."
This season is the first Terika can remember that at least one player hasn't stayed with them for an extended period of time.
"I won't say we have extra bedrooms," Robert Left said. "But we got extra beds where they can sleep with my boys in their rooms, if need be.
"Pearl-Cohn is a big family atmosphere."
The Lefts are a big part of the reason why.
'I've been here all my life'
Landan, the second-youngest of seven children, began attending Pearl-Cohn games when he was 6 or 7 years old. He had a front-row seat for older brother Robert's run to the 2023 TSSAA Class 4A state championship. Now, he's trying to win one of his own.
He came close as a sophomore, after he transferred from Montgomery Bell Academy and the Firebirds made the state semifinals. He came closer as a junior, helping lead the team to the TSSAA Class 4A state championship game.
"I've been here all my life," Landan said. "Pearl has been a big part of my history. I know the legacy, Coach (Tony) Brunetti. ... It was a pretty easy decision to come here."
This season, the kid who was asked to wear No. 7 by coaches before last season, is aiming for a title of his own.
Why No. 7?
Worn in the past by players such as New Orleans Saints rookie Barion Brown and Zeion Simpson-Smith, who plays for MTSU, the number is bestowed up a player coaches deem to be dependable leaders, or "dawgs," as Landan described them.
"The pressure was on when I first got it," said the 5-foot-10, 190-pound cornerback/running back said. "Once I got back to myself playing free and playing football, it made it way easier.
"But it's big shoes to fill."
The time Landan Left wore his grandfather's shoes
If the shoe fits, or even if it doesn't, Landan Left wears it.
Whether it comes to the No. 7 or his actual shoes.
Pearl-Cohn quarterback LJ Funk can attest to that. Funk transferred from Brentwood High at the suggestion of Left and his family, a reunion of two boys who began playing basketball together in fourth grade and became closer than two coats of paint in the meantime.
He recalled a bus ride for a big game at Battle Ground Academy last season, when Left informed Funk that he had somehow brought two left cleats.
"He was gonna play," Funk said with a laugh. "He got lucky. They canceled the game because of the rain."
Terika recalled a time when the boys were in fourth grade, this time on their way to a big AAU Nationals basketball tournament in North Carolina. On the way there, it was discovered that the only shoes Left had with him were the Crocs on his feet.
"His granddad had to give him his shoes, which were a size 12," Terika said. "Landan played in those shoes and he killed it that day. That's just Landan."
"This dude went out there and had like 20 rebounds and 10 steals," Funk said. "No matter what happens, he's going to go out there and play."
No matter what happens, Landan Left is going go out there and work, too.
And he'll do it for his moms and his dad and his Pearl-Cohn family.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Pearl-Cohn football's Landan Left dealt with mom's death, became WKU recruit | Exclusive
